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HY 



REV. D. M. HODGE 



' For I am ware it is the seed of act, 
God holds appraising in His hollow palm." 

ROBERT BROWNING, 



AUTHOR'S EDITION. 



V 



^\ 



I 
/ 

NEW HAVEN. 
HENRY H. PECK, PUBLISHER. 




1870. 






^%P^ 



Eniei'ed^ acco7'ding to Act of Congress, ht the year 1870, 
By D. Munson Hodge, 
in the office of the Librarian! of Congress, at Washington. 



Printed by 

TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR, 

221 Stcite street. New Haven. 



TO 



JA . j.. fi 



THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY AND KINDLY DEDICATED, 



BY 



The Author. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Proemial, ...... *9 

CHAPTER L 

Treasures Better than Gold, . . 27 

CHAPTER II. 

The Province of Law, . . , . 71 

CHAPTER III. 

Things to be Added, .... 107 

Appendix, . . . . . . 145 



PROEMIAL. 



PROEMIAL. 



For those who have studied carefully, and 
with due reflection, the history of our social 
life for some years past, logic can not levi- 
gate the fact that our criminal laws do not, 
for some reason, perfectly meet the ends for 
which we suppose them to exist. While we 
expect them to diminish crime and its fearful 
consequences, we must all agnize that crim- 
inality goes on steadily increasing. While 
we believe they should continually elevate 
and purif}^ public feeling, we seem rushing, 
without let, toward some lightless Abaddon 
of social ruin, which never returns to this 
world its dead. Looking to see them work 
out a permanent divorce between anarchy 



lO THE HIGHEST LAW, 

and our American civilization, we see in the 
flashes of prophetic light the threatened union 
of these, not many ages distant. 

These years speak their own language. 
They utter their own warning, and we 
should agrise with growing dread to hear 
it. Yet we go on in our blind, reckless way, 
assuming that our agencies for our own bet- 
terment are infallibly the right ones, and at 
the same time, with a singular alogy, that 
the growing badness of society is inevitable, 
and this sickening smoke of Hell a necessary 
element of a republican atmosphere. But is 
it not time to throw off this lethal night- 
mare of stupidity and ask if the world is 
already so near the millennial Golden Age 
that the means of its better governance are all 
exhausted ? if we are, in realit}^ wise in our 
day and generation, doing always the right 
things for the reformation of our fallen ? It is 
time for us to ask if our present statutes, politi- 
cal and social, are indeed redeeming angels to 



P ROE MIA L. 



II 



the weak and tempted and untaught and will- 
ful of God's Earth ; if the godless passion of 
revenge is indeed the true basis of human 
law ; if the vindictive punishment of wrong- 
doing is the proper aim of law-making, while 
law sanctions the wide-spread scattering of 
the seeds of sin ; if American civil society 
has a holy right to murder her owm bastards, 
benempt Crime and Sin, and continue to 
create them. 

As the world grows older and wiser, it 
may be found that justice is something wholly 
different from revenge ; that a just govern- 
ment, since Christ has lived upon the Earth, 
accepts not the old law, ''an eye for an eye, 
a tooth for a tooth." Justice was once veiled 
in the blood-suggesting draper}^ into ^vhich 
words like these were woven, w^aiting for an 
unveiling in Christian years. When they are 
more fully come, we shall discern, as the rab- 
ble do not now, her fellowship with love 
and wisdom. 



12 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

The progress of the world has been marked 
by the use of the higher elements and instru- 
mentalities instead of the lower, for the pro- 
duction of the better results of each separate 
age. But the beginning was very low down. 
Men could not drive the fast steeds first. 
They stood in awe of the higher elements, 
rather than used them for their service. The 
power of tireless rivers turned no busy wheels. 
The unweary, unseen, electric forces of earth 
and air had not been taught an articulate lan- 
guage. Water, from which the ancient drank, 
had not brought forth, in its labour-heat, a 
mighty, yet manageable steed for him. He 
did not know, and therefore could not profit 
by the depths of meaning and the miracles 
of power which were everywhere about him, 
and when they were first revealed they met 
only the scorn and ridicule of skeptics. But 
finally, in the gloaming of a new age, men 
began to learn that they and the elements 
and powers of nature were made for each 



PROEMIAL. 



13 



other ; that man as the irregular, volitient 
being, might use the constant, law-heeding 
forces for the carrying into action of his pur- 
poses, if he would only put his labour in their 
road. All things in nature move their cease- 
less way. If man puts his treadmill in their 
path they make it go. But there arose 
experiment, partial failure, new experiment, 
and therefore, — improvement. Of nothing 
has this been more true than of government. 
In this work there are, certes, constant ele- 
ments of human nature to be taken advantage 
of, and in a collective way, turned against 
the special aberrant tendency of the indi- 
vidual, and men began by using the lowest 
elements at the first. Revenge before reason ; 
brute force before spiritual ; Tables of Stone 
before the tablets of human hearts ; such was 
the way of the world. 

While chivalries, religions, paganisms glo- 
rified revenge, there came a new power into 
the world, not to condemn but to save ; not 



14 



THE HIGHEST LAW, 



to visit the individual with new inflictions, 
devised by vindictive wrath, but to place a 
new restraint upon the human heart, the 
iniquitous origin of evil doing. It began by 
an Annunciation from high heaven to a Vir- 
gin. Verily, it came with no new scorpion 
whips, no new Sinai thunders. It was the 
same voice that spoke. It aimed, as in the 
old age, to reach self-fallen men. The world- 
creating power of Omnipotence was in it, 
but hidden now, and unconfessed, save when 
the wings of more than twelve legions of the 
angels murmur in the air. There was no 
new surging earthward of the hell-flames. 
The power was not of a wrathful, but a 
grieved God, longing to save ; hungering, 
not for the inevitable, retributive wretched- 
ness of sinful souls, but for their reconcilia- 
tion to Himself, — the saving of them from 
the darkness and ruin of sin. It is this power 
and this providence which are the acme of 
Divinity, the clear-shining light which so 



PROEMIAL, 



15 



comes into our earth's dark and damp from 
the strong tor of God, that no straying, 
stumbling, human child can fail to recognize 
it. Higher than Moses is Jesus Christ ; the 
incarnation of the Highest, even. Tower- 
ing above the Mosaic Law is the New Law, 
teaching, if it teaches anything at all, that 
the work to be done under its dispensation is 
not to condemn, but save ; not to curse, but, 
if possible, redeem. Whatever God may 
have for men in the future, this is His work 
in the present. It may be easier to kill than 
to cure ; to destroy the work of sin than to 
prevent sin from doing its work, by taking 
away its machinery. The satanic road al- 
ways promises well in the beginning. Pres- 
ent expediency is the standard Plutonian 
argument. But I think there is a long expe- 
diency, with God pointing to it ; that there 
are heroes, saints, God's men, in this world, 
and a much better one somewhere, who have 
found this way a very comfortable ope to 



1 6 THE HIGHEST LAW, 

travel, and in the end the best one they could 
have journeyed over ; have found, indeed, that 
this was the only road leading to any place 
worth going to. And I think that we, as a 
people, w411 find the work God puts before 
us about the only work worth doing ; the 
only work in the end expedient for us. It is 
not good to kick against the pricks. When 
God sets the machinery of this world running 
in a certain way, a people, or a government 
which sets itself desperately going in an 
opposite way, will arrive at something ; and 
that something, — if it persists long enough, 
will be — an end. There ought to be no doubt 
of that. When God's work is redemption, 
and a certain people, caring nothing about 
saving, goes on destroying men, soul and 
body ; goes on permitting men to be destroy- 
ed, concentrating its whole power on destruc- 
tion, that people will arrive at something, — 
will arrive at a very palpable Hell before it 
knows it. And there ought to be no doubt 



FROEMIAL. 



17 



about that. Some day there will not be. 
This American people seems to be making 
pretty good speed to this end just now, and 
the problem is to check it and finally turn it 
the other way. When prophets are few, the 
people must speak, first listening to the still, 
small voices. And these voices — do they not 
speak in clear words to us all, teaching all 
who are teachable, that it is because we des- 
pise the highest elements of government, 
and refuse to employ the highest powers of 
human nature, that the darkness given us for 
resting in, unsheathes the assassin's blade and 
opens all our doors to crimes as black as any 
which this ill-going earth has ever known? 
Again I say, it is very hard to kick against 
the pricks. With our ideas of government 
and law, founded on lawlessness, — on re- 
venge which is lawlessness, — with our brain- 
less and soulless assumption that God's laws 
are very comfortable things to hear about, 
now and then, but very ridiculous things to 



1 8 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

go out into the world with, and attempt to 
govern men with, that is precisely what we 
are doing. I think that, on the whole, God 
has managed this Universe, so far as His 
power extended, very satisfactorily. All the 
terrible sense of failure in it, all the sin and 
wrong of it, all the disorder and 'moral 
paralysis of it, come of thinking there is a 
wiser way to manage its affairs than God has 
found out ; come of thinking man's way best 
and wisest. Christianity, according to mod- 
ern wisdom, is a very good thing as a theory, 
but it will not do in business, — it will not do 
in law. Man's way is much the wisest there, 
we say. This plan has been followed about 
nineteen hundred years now, by a certain 
class of men. A few men have given some 
attention to heaven's work of saving. A 
great many have given attention to the 
Fiend's work of destroying. I say it fear- 
lessly, — law has been, in good part, the 
Fiend's servant. It is to-day his servant. 



PROEMIAL, 



19 



working the ruin of men ; in many silent 
ways, most surely working it ; choking the 
poor wretches at the last, for being ruined 
by it. A few men pay a certain fee for the 
privilege of shooting at the souls of all men 
from a drug-filled bottle, and of bringing 
down whom they can. Law takes the wound- 
ed, fever-maddened victim and shuts him in 
her Station House, or Jail, or Penitentiary. 
Whichever it may be, however short his con- 
finement there, he goes out under God's sky 
again, a tainted man, — henceforth a criminaL 
Law has driven him to that. Call you that 
God's work ? Call you that using the higher 
elements of human nature ? Is that the High- 
est Law possible in a land like this ? I trow 
not. 

''Well," you ask, ''what can be done?" 

Gradually many things might be done ; 

must be done ; in some better days, will be 

done. Gradually we might get back to God's 

way of work, dropping revenge out of law, 

3 



20 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

doing something to save men from ruin, to 
strengthen them, restrain them. Finally it 
might be found that safety is a thing to be 
cared for more than revenge, — to be placed 
higher than revenge ; and that law might 
have better pastime than the killing of men. 
It is not the shedding of blood which 
appalls me. When it is necessary for the 
safety of any nation, worth saving, that it 
shall send its men out to smoky fields to 
die for it, that man is a poor, spiritless cow- 
ard who dare not lay down his life, if it 
comes to that. If walls and bolts and bars 
will not ensure us safety from a murderer, 
it may be justifiable to hang him. But no 
country is justifiable in making such men. 
Their blood, and that of their victims, will be 
found on the skirts of law-makers when God 
examines them. And there is one Judge who 
can not be bribed ; one Court where the plea 
of passionate revenge is no excuse ; where 
John Graham defences are unheard. 



P ROE MIA L. 21 

After nineteen hundred years of ever-in- 
creasing failure, begun by crucifying the 
God-Man, and releasing the wrong one at the 
start, it does seem that we might hope for 
some success by taking up God's plan, and 
getting rid of Barabbas. For Barabbas has 
grown devilish these years, and by means of a 
wonderful trick of temptation, now robs us of 
men, — the property, bodies and souls of them. 
It does seem that we might do something, if 
we would only consider the divine work of 
salvation, — which modern political teachers 
regard as well put out of the way, on Calva- 
ry's blood-reddened rood, — a noble, holy 
thing to fall in with, and work in harmony 
with. Take aw^ay Barabbas, and let us get 
back Christ. Let us get back the spirit of 
Him, at least, and get it in our hearts and in 
our law^s, and then we will see what may be 
done. Let us get Him back, and perhaps He 
will tell us what to do with these men who 
neither go themselves, nor suffer others to 



22 T^HE HIGHEST LA W, 

go, into the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us 
shut up the pitfalls which open along ovir 
streets to destroy men, and I am sure we will 
find ourselves more in harmony with the 
eternal Lawmaker ; and in harmony with 
Him does lie success. 

Brutalizing, blood-thirsty, heaven-defying 
chivalry has gone down, unmourned, into its 
Lethe of sad death. Revenge has lost its 
charm of romance and its power. It is a hid- 
eous sea-shell, with the life gone out of it, 
cast by the stenchy waves of the old, dead 
past, upon living shores of this transitional 
To-day. Dwellers in the world's low tides 
may still use it : Reals and McFarlands may 
employ it ; but your men in the jury-box 
very often hesitate to enforce laws so inhu- 
man and so useless. Law dares not take a 
stride toward God and become at once pre- 
ventive and enforceable. It clings to its sea- 
shell, breeds you McFarlands ; and this is the 
result of it : law hurrying toward Pandemo- 



PROEMIAL. 



23 



nium, men robbed in their sleep and mur- 
dered in their beds and in your streets. 

My brother men ! are not reason, con- 
science, love of safety, higher and more cer- 
tain elements of human nature than revenge? 
Consider, in your hearts, if law, in the true 
sense, be not something different from law- 
lessness invested with power; if God's work, 
dictated for us, be not worth}^, in this age 
of the world's history, the attention of men 
and society and governments ; if it be not 
worthy of the place, and the name, of the 
Highest Law. 

Even if you can answer in the negative to 
all this, I shall still have hope for the world, 
looking forward to much wiser guidance 
than yours. For the coming days are full 
with overturnings and events. God's hand 
is on this ill, sin-desolated earth. He is the 
same God who dealt with the Cities of the 
Plain ; who overcame His enemy on the 
Damascus road : who struck, from the cloud 



?>•' 



24 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

and the flame of war, the fetters of our dark- 
skinned slaves away ; who thrills down 
through the Universe, with supreme mastery 
over all. 

136 Chapel Street, 
New Haven, Conn. 



Treasures Better than Gold. 



"Whenever there is a definite damage, or a definite risk 
of damage, either to an individual, or to the public, the 
case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in 
that of moral itv or law." — John Stuart Mill. 



CHAPTER I. 

TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 

The best wealth of any country is its man- 
hood and its womanhood. Of these, nothing 
can adequately take the place. They have an 
enduring, an eternal value, depending upon 
no human market, no human conditions of 
supply and demand. They seem to defy all 
such conditions, rising in appreciation as they 
grow in quantity and plenitude of power. 
All other kinds of coin only represent value. 
These may be, in themselves, value. A gold 
dollar represents power. In my hands, it 
represents my power over my neighbour 
who w^ants it, and its value varies according 
to the intensity and greatness of his want. 



28 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

I have Ten Dollars in genuine cvirrency of 
'^ The Confederate States of America/' No 
man wants it. No man permits it to have 
power over him. No person on this earth, 
blessed with heaven's precious gift of com- 
mon sense, will give me his time, his labour, 
his property for it. It represents no power; 
or, in other words, it is worthless. It is a 
sign, or token, of a thing. The thing itself 
is dead. But I have another thing's sign and 
the thing signified exists. I can, therefore, 
say to this man, Go ! and he goeth, to the 
extent of the power the sign represents. 
It may represent more power over this man 
than another, more power to-day than at 
some future time. It still remains true that 
it is a sign, and the thing signified is — power 
over men. The man, therefore, who has 
great power over men is called a wealthy 
man, and a government which has great 
power over men is called a wealthy gov- 
ernment. 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 



29 



But there is a kind of wealth which is 
power ; which is, in fact, the greatest power 
a country can possess. It is manhood and 
womanhood. 

A nation wants working power, thinking 
power, fighting power. It wants vast armies 
of power ; power to bring order out of dis- 
order, beauty, harmony, things eatable and 
wearable and otherwise usable, out of chaos. 
Gold alone, can not do this. In the strict 
sense, it can in nowise do it. Manhood 
alone, the worthiest, best, is sufficient for 
these things. It alone is, to the country 
which has it in possession, the highest, truest 
wealth. And according to the degree of 
development of physical, mental, moral and 
religious life, or in other words, according to 
the degree of organized, incarnate, manly 
and' womanly power, — inhering in its people, 
a country may lay claim to, will be its influ- 
ence among the earth-families, the tenacity 
of its hold upon peace and life, and the dis- 



30 



THE HIGHEST LAW. 



tance between it and the gaping jaws of the 
abyss of down-swallowing, anarchic death. 
The present pages of the earth have proof of 
this. Its history, too, speaks confirmation. 

The overturnings of the past, the tramp- 
ling out of the lives of mighty nations, the 
establishment of new dynasties, empires, par- 
tial tyrannies, on the ruins of the dead, have 
been only the conquests of higher manhood 
in its inevitable successes. Swiftly, authori- 
tatively, sometimes silently and mysteriously, 
it conquers. Perseus, begotten of Jove, 
hurls back ever, even in his play, the quoit 
of death at the decrepid, old. The god in 
him takes precedence of man, and higher 
power, though youthful, — even if it be embry- 
otic, — is the mightier ; mightier for labour, 
for conquest, for perpetuation of itself. 

From that early epocha when darkness, at 
divine command, confined itself to night and 
the caverns, America, for aught I know, has 
been the great, green, fertile, mountain-rib- 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 31 

bed and river-ribboned continent it is, in 
these days, to us. The great wealth of capa- 
bility manifest to-day, lay deep within her, 
silent as the graves. Columbus slumbered 
yet, unbegotten, in the veins of his forefathers. 
The discovery lay far in the future, beyond 
time-oceans, in an age not yet touched by the 
feet of dreams. A strange people dwelt in 
America, their claim upon her undenied, — so 
far as they could foresee, — endless. They 
were the rightful owners of this habitable 
land. At last, after the passing of ages, is born 
the great soul of the Discoverer. The world 
has rolled round to him, and the sun of his day 
shines upon it. There, in the Eastern w^aters, 
before astonished eyes, as if dropped there 
by the Great Spirit, things of mystery, of 
mighty portent, — there are the ships. Out 
of them, upon America, there steps a higher 
man than has been afoot on her soil before ; — 
a man with a larger soul in him. There is 
significance in that, to those red lookers-on, 

4 



32 



THE HIGHEST LAW. 



could they but understand it. Aye, there is 
doom in it ; swift, relentless doom. 

Amid wars, and rumours of wars, this pale- 
browed race advances, driving steadily their 
red inferiors, in one solemn death-march, 
toward the Western sky. Not from Spain ' 
only, but from France and the Netherlands, 
come others, with pale foreheads and diviner 
souls, to inhabit, not to rule, the land. From 
no nether-lands come the rulers. No nether- 
men are entitled to rule. Britain, by virtue 
of its higher manhood, owns the land, driv- 
ing the red men on that death-march still, 
toward the Western sky ; — owns it and rules 
it, till it, in its turn, lays claim to noble man- 
hood, and, up-rising in its power, declares 
itself able and determined to rule itself; able 
and determined to drive, for itself, its infe- 
riors on that march of theirs toward the sun- 
set of their life. 

My candid reader, this bit of history tells 
the same tale told by all other history. All 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 33 

inferior manhood, all inferior life, willfully, 
stubbornly inferior, is on this grand death- 
march toward the sunset and the Western 
sk3^ The light there, which leads it on, is 
the glare of death. Dead days are there, 
dead inferiorities, dead infelicities. Go with 
them, if you are one of them. Stay not here 
to curse and be trampled. Into the ranks 
Avith you ! Join the death-march ! The 
Western sky awaits you, and there shall be 
unmoist eyes in many heads when you are 
once gone. Red revenge, with its reasonless 
raptures ; brutality, stupidity ; all but wealth, 
(weal,) worth, (valour, value;) all but these 
are marching toward the dead. These onl}- 
are enduring. These are treasures better 
than gold. 

It has been ascertained that three things 
are necessary to constitute a political state, 
or nation. 

1. Territory, 

2. Population. 



34 



THE HIGHEST LAW, 



3. Law. 

Perhaps it would be well to ask, in the first 
place, what kind of territory is required. 
The Great Desert, for instance, how would a 
nationality flourish there ? The flat, cold 
region aSout the Northern extremity of the 
supposed axis ; how long would it take a 
colony there to crystallize into a distinct gov- 
ernment? It would crystallize into some- 
thing else, I fancy. We shall find, as we 
reflect, that territory of a certain kind, or 
under certain conditions, is necessary to ena- 
ble a nation to exist ; and that, other things 
being equal, that nation which has best and 
most fertile territory, subject to the best and 
most temperate climate, will have the strong- 
est hold upon life and success. 

Leaving the whole subject of law to be 
discussed in another chapter, I propose to 
ask, in this, what kinds of population are 
required to constitute a successful nation, or 
state. May they be North American In- 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 



35 



dians? Truly, the only experiment with 
such people seems to have resulted only in a 
death-march, not in a civilized government. 
May they be Caffres ? They also seem to be 
very slow in organizing into a nation. Civil- 
ization does not seem to be the most promi- 
nent capability within them ; seems to be, in 
fact, a difihcult, if not an impossible, thing to 
get into them. There is no wealth in them. 
They are counterfeits in the world's great 
market. Millions of them bring their countr)^ 
no nearer civilized prosperity ; only bring it 
nearer to anarchy, lawlessness, and death. 

We shall find that it makes a vast differ- 
ence w4th the nation whether its people be 
men, or Yahoos ; pale-browed Christians, or 
African Pagans ; thinking, reasoning beings, 
or semblances of men, worse than the An- 
droides. Compare Christian England with 
Mexico, — not even wholesomely un-christian. 
On the one hand, we have a small, irregular 
island ; not remarkably fertile, or productive 



4* 



36 THE HIGHEST LAW, 

of eatable things ; unblessed with the soft, 
balmy air of tropic lands ; Avith no overtow- 
ering natural advantages ; with a people, — 
not the best conceivable, it is true, — but 
which will compare favourably with the pop- 
ulation of any land, at the present time. On 
the other hand, we have a country, rich in 
vegetation, and in mineral wealth ; fortunate 
in her climate, in all things nature can sup- 
ply for the use of man ; fortunate in all 
things but manhood and womanhood. Poor- 
er than the traditional Job's Turkey, were its 
small stock of these its only wealth. Poor 
enough in fact. On the one hand, we have a 
wealthy, powerful, prosperous nation. On 
the other, a miserable, God-forsaking people, 
never permanently peaceful, never success- 
ful ; always bankrupt, always lingering in 
the chronic disease of war, ready to die and 
be done awa}^ with as a nationality. For 
half the manhood of England, Mexico could 
well afford to give her all the exchangeable 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 37 

riches she has ever had ; all the gold and 
silver which lie, unmined, within her ; all the 
precious stones which lie, untouched, along 
her loneh' rivers and blood-stained roads. 
She will never get that manhood. England, 
Avith unsettled Alabama claims, has none to 
spare, I fear. To sell it for gold has been 
declared a crime before God and man. All 
men agree in saying that manhood is price- 
less ; that it is a treasure better than gold. 

Manhood will think for England, labour 
for her, fight for her. Manhood and woman- 
hood will write her poems and her prose ; 
give her rhythmic truth, and truthful prose ; 
tell her, in Mill's strong common sense, in 
Ruskin's splendour of word-painting, what is 
good for her, and in Carhdish sledge-ham- 
mer strokes of thought, what is not good for 
her. Manhood will work in the mine, at the 
flame-tongued forge, in humming factories, 
and fertile fields, for her life, prosperit}' and 
greatness. It will go out, red-coated, red- 



38 ^HE HIGHEST LAW. 

taped, aye, red-flamed, to do deadly work for 
her, if necessary ; risking life and limb, for 
her sake, on smoky, blood-soaked fields. 
With this kind of wealth, England lives ; 
seems to live very comfortably in fact ; future 
failure dimly discernible only in the fact that 
she too, lacks somewhat in this priceless kind 
of treasure. 

Poor Mexico ! bankrupt, dissolute, out-at- 
the-elbows, passion-guided, lawless, where 
are her poets, her makers, workers, and fight- 
ers. Alas ! she is altogether hopeless, dying 
of her poverty, struggling to get herself 
respectably buried, — and struggling in vain. 
And for that, which, — bearing the figure and 
form of man, — still lacks in inner value, val- 
our, and is given unredeemably into posses- 
sion of all gross and willful passion, there 
waits this destiny and this least of blessings : 
the privilege of learning, in its peacefullest 
moments, the bitter truth, that the best thing 
which can happen to it, is death and speedy 



TJ^EASCRES BETTER THAX GOLD. 30 

burial. In such manner it can soonest sfet 
out of this present death, which is its exist- 
ence. It is a counterfeit on God's coin ; on 
its country's coin. It is worthless in this 
world, so far as it is unmanly, ungodly, coun- 
terfeit. Burial being impracticable, it dilutes 
the common-wealth, and must, until God, hav- 
ing given it all the opportunity He ever will, 
in this world, for redeeming itself, getting 
itself wrought anew into the uncounterfeit, 
calls it home, puts a new power upon it, 
unknown to it before. 

A country, state, locality, wants calm, prac- 
tised, earnest, honest work for itself; mani- 
fold production ; distributive power, without 
stain from extortion ; above all, the power of 
clear minds, right hearts, great thoughts. 
In these, deep-threaded, interwoven, lie the 
veins of its life ; deep-working there, throb- 
bing there, as in a great heart and its channels, 
is its verv life-blood. Whatever of unmanli- 
ness, of uncalculating, unreasoning, undelib- 



40 THE HIGHEST LA W. ^ 

erate passion goes into its work, into its life, 
is disease, working death, poisoning it at the 
heart. The Alabamas of a nation, wrought 
first in the ideal, — not in any healthy thought- 
heat, — but in unhealthy, destructive passion- 
fire, burning in its midst ; the Ku-Klux Klans 
of a nation, feeding with honest blood, stolen 
by murder, the fires of passion still ; the red 
Aborigines of a country, with fury fed by fire- 
water and governmental agencies for lying 
and stealing ; the4azy, unlawfully-populating 
*^ chivalries," fire-eaters, fire-drinkers, such 
as have been, in one country, at least ; the 
assassins, firing bullets at the heads of its 
honest Presidents ; the Nathan murderers. 
Reals ; the adulterers, gamblers, robbers, 
harlots, swindlers, drunkards, drunkard-mak- 
ers ; these are not, on the whole, an advan- 
tage to a nation. They are not wealth. 
They are all counterfeits, deadly to wealth. 

These only are wealth. These are the 
economists. Men, like Poet Whittier, who 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 



41 



bring order out of disorder, and set forth in 
rhythmic, or in other form, the truth which 
men may live by, — which their country may 
live by, — may die for lack of, — or be threat- 
ened with death for refusing to obey ; all 
the poets, authors, thinkers, preachers, who 
are able to tell men how they may truly 
live, hoV they may best resist the trespass 
of physical, moral, and other kinds of death ; 
in fact, how they may work, expend and 
accumulate power ; all those other '^ poets," 
makers, who produce things to be eaten, 
worn, or in any other right manner used for 
the maintenance, the development, culture, 
or adornment of life ; all who assist in the 
distribution, or preservation, of useful, help- 
ful, beautiful things ; all the reason-lighted, 
industrious men and w^omen, who walk not 
according to the darkness, chaos, and base 
passion that are in them, but according to 
the light, order, and divine voices that are 
in them ; these, with their various degrees 



42 



THE HIGHEST LA W. 



of power, their infinitely-varied work-im- 
pulses, constitute the vital wealth of their 

country. The Washingtons fathers, the 

Lincolns — saviours, the Morses, the silently- 
working millions, — these are the men we can 
not live without ; the men the world can 
not live without. In the absence of these 
there is no government ; chaos reigns ; things 
start backward toward the primeval nonen- • 
tities again, travelling very swiftly thither- 
ward, until some valour of soul shall meet 
them and show that there is really value 
once more, conquering its way heavenward. 

The veins of wealth lie not only in the 
crystallized, hard rock, but deep in human 
hearts. In them, washed by the purple, 
beating currents, are gems upon which the 
Moth-demons, Rust-demons, Robber-demons 
of chaos have no power, but which in them- 
selves do have power; which do form them- 
selves, not into jewels for unmerited crowns, 
or circlets of beauty for empty Kinghoods, 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 



43 



but into forces which furnish life, bring forth 
order, sustain the honour and prosperity of 
their country, subdue the earth, scale the 
battlemented heights of difificult}^ stand upon 
the star-hiding turrets where Fame's bright 
orifliamme waves the ambient air, and unlock 
even the invisible gates of heaven. Mined, 
not only in the rocky heart of a continent, 
but in the blood-warm heart of man, is the 
wealth we live by. In the deep soul of man, 
there, too, is El Dorado. Infinitely happier 
will this world be when it has learned to 
estimate, at its full worth, the noble treasures 
which lie in toiling, suffering, bravely-endur- 
ing flesh and blood ; when it can reverence, 
above the dead symbols of things, thinking, 
feeling, self-directing, — and, in capability at 
least, — godlike man. Then there will be 
days worth living in. 

The protective duty of government would 
seem, at first thought, to be already under- 
stood. A political power which can not pro- 

5 



44 THE HIGHEST LAW, 

tect its own, needs to die, and get itself out 
of the world ; to get itself back, in fact, to its 
kinships, among the chaotic nonentities. It 
has no mission on this present earth. Such 
semblances of government have, thus far, 
been good enough, after a few generations of 
misdoing, to follow this plan. In a general, 
indistinct way, this seems to be almost uni- 
versally understood. 

In some degree true to this duty, this 
nation, in doing something of this work, has 
sown our Southern soil with terrible hail of 
metal, our cemeteries with graves, our homes 
with death, sacrificing much, to save more. 
Armies, red-taped, and disciplined ; navies of 
mailed monsters of the deep, are maintained 
for service, in protecting, at least, the com- 
mercial wealth of nations. Blood beats in 
its defence ; guns frown defiance on over- 
covetous enemies ; national loyalty, national 
pride, patriotism, are their unsleeping safe- 
guards. And this should be so. The prop- 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 



45 



ert}', the person, of an American citizen, 
should be safe in any remote locality of the 

civilized world ; made so by the power of 
this government. 

But with all our boasted power, and influ- 
ence ; with all our ability and eagerness to 
produce the commercial forms of wealth ; 
with all the various safeguards we have 
placed about them, to protect them ; with 
the many institutions, contrivances, precau- 
tions, by which we hedge them in from 
danger ; shall it be said, after all, that Ameri- 
can manhood and womanhood are mostl}^ 
unprotected? That they run a difficult road, 
along which law has permitted pitfalls, 
through which, every day, they may drop 
into Hell? Are we, ''the sovereign people" 
who govern this great country, ''the great- 
est and best the sun ever shone on," — are we, 
after all, mostly fools ? Sadh' I confess there 
is plausibility in the affirmation that these 
things are so. 



46 THE HIGHEST LA W. 

It is not altogether ominous that we have 
far-stretching Western lands, if we can not 
have good manhood to turn them to account. 
Such lands have been owned before, and the 
result was, a death-march toward the West- 
ern, peaceful ocean. To the people which 
once held possession of this land, their infe- 
rior manhood was sadly ominous, foreshad- 
owing failure, despair, annihilation. The 
same God who ruled this Universe then, 
rules now. We shall not find Him changed 
much, I fancy. We shall find, verily, that in 
so far as our population approximates, — in its 
submission to the promptings of wild passion, 
and the voices which speak, in the absence of 
calm, cultivated reason, — to the Red-Dust 
which civilization has swept away, in just so 
far, if we take not up this Westward march 
of the doomed, we shall take a downward 
journey, toward the Pacific death-abodes. 
Do you, reader, doubt that ? A Mexico, a 
Cuba, a Southern Confederacy, — if, from the 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 47 

verge of these abodes, or from within them, 
their sad voices, or still sadder silences, can 
come back to you, — tell you, in thrilling, sol- 
emn utterances, or in more thrilling, pain- 
ful stillnesses, not to doubt that ; to forget it, 
only if you dare forget, and at your peril. 
The sad, maimed braves, the graves on which 
the flowers of early summer fall, from which, 
too, comes painful silence, — these all tell you 
not to doubt that. If you can read history, 
even the history of the present, and have the 
patience to think a little, as you are a living 
man, or woman, you do not doubt it. 

It takes more than a red skin to make a 
savage. Fiery passions, appetites ungovern- 
able, desires that rage in a man, these, and not 
the colour of the skin, proclaim most audibly 
the savage nature. Truly, Sioux, Comanches, 
Blackfoots, are said to be copper-coloured. 
Assassins, Blacklegs, for instance, are not. In 
so far as our population consists of these, so far 
are we in poverty, danger, — subject to death. 

5^ 



48 THE HIGHEST LA W. 

I demand, therefore, that, so long as we 
profess to have a government; to establish 
laws ; to protect our own ; we shall, first of all, 
protect this noblest and best thing of ours — 
manhood ; that we shall take measures to 
prevent it from becoming savagery, brutality, 
human chaos ; that, when we are unable to 
do this, we shall make short work of dying, 
and get out of this world's way. I demand 
that we shall try to get in harmony with 
God, try even to save men, so that God, and 
the on-rolling of His worlds, shall help us. 
If we will not do this, I trust, and pray, that 
He may help us very speedily to die. Unless 
He has changed much, which I do not think 
possible, He will so help us. 

Possibly it may be well to ask what we 
have done, hitherto, to protect our treasures 
of greatest worth. What instrumentalities 
have we employed to save our manly and 
w^omanly VIRTUE ? That is, as the ancestry 
of words tells me, value, worth. What safe- 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 49 

ofuards have we for that kind of wealth? 
Chiefly these. The Gallows, by means of 
which we take God's work out of His hands ; 
declaring that we are wiser than He ; climb- 
ing up our conceit, to His Judgment-Throne ; 
considering the King of Kings unkinged. 
By means of this institution, we strangle men, 
and find, that instead of saving our manhood, 
we have, year after year, more men to stran- 
gle. Why should we not have ? What suc- 
cess ever did come of attempting to dethrone 
God ? By means of this beautiful, this re- 
fined amusement of ours, we take the man 
whom our laws have permitted to become a 
criminal, have permitted other men to craze, 
until the devil in him is let loose, and with 
a virtuous indignation, choke him out of the 
world. O, my countr}' I poor, sinning mother, 
hiding, in death, the evidence of thy shame, 
I hope for better things from thee, some day ! 
The Prison also is our safeguard. Warning 
men not to become criminals? Nay, only 



so 



THE HIGHEST LAW. 



warning them not to be caught. It does se- 
cure society against injury from the most 
lawless, and so is indispensable, but it does 
not restrain men from becoming lawless ; it 
does not save manhood from falling into ruin, 
gliding into crime. 

Finally, we have schools, which our young 
and tender manhood may attend, or not, as it 
chooses, but in which, if it do attend, it may 
have its power of self-government, self-pres- 
ervation, developed, cultivated. This insti- 
tution does have saving power. It is the 
only one, ordained by law, which does have. 
So far as its influence can go, it is salutary 
and conservant. 

But there are yet other institutions ; schools 
too, of a kind; upheld too, by law ; which are 
deathful and destructive. Schools, where 
Profanity, Lust, disordered Appetite, are the 
masters ; where the}^ mould manhood into'all 
hateful, deformed, ugly ruin ; where they rob 
man of his worth ; the country of its wealth ; 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 5 i 

God of His souls, which would be, without 
such mastership. His, unchaotic. Govern- 
ment bribed, blinded by bad men, given 
over to a boy-like recklessness, permits this 
robbery ; applies to it the laws which regu- 
late healthy commerce ; heeds not the mur- 
der-cries and robberies ; hurries on, in some- 
thing faintly like a death-march, toward the 
anarchic, the lawless, the crashing and order- 
less Wreck-Kingdoms. 

We shall see plainly how this comes to be. 
I say here, once for all, that I never could 
believe that the eternal truths, the noble vir- 
tues, the godly powers of conscience, reason, 
spirit-insight, could be planted in the soul of 
a man, by an Act of Legislature. Men are 
not barrels, to be filled as we dictate. They 
are not even clay, to be movilded according 
to the pottery-rules of a nation. Little by 
little, things have to grow into them, — 
through long years, with deepest silence, 
tenderest touch of an influence which never 



52 



THE HIGHEST LA W. 



trumpets itself, but almost hides its name, — 
gradually strengthening ; in that awful still- 
ness, growing, with tough fibres, deeper and 
deeper ; until, at last, they are a part of the 
real estate of a man's soul. Governments, 
laws, are not gods, but atmospheres. They 
can not make men, but they can, and do, 
unmake them ; they can, and do, unman 
them. This better thing they can do ; they 
can take the man God has made, throw 
around him helpful influences, rid his way of 
temptations and enticements, encourage in 
him all the beginnings of virtue, discourage 
him at all wrong beginnings, make it harder 
for him to fall, easier for him to escape fall- 
ing. And when any government will not try 
to do this, then, for it, the end of all hope is 
not very far distant ; if it does not change 
itself, it will soon arrive. One of the great^ 
falsities is the idea that the present is not the 
all-important, the all-decisive time ; that the 
Judgment-Day never dawns within the encir- 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 53 

cling horizon of this world. Yet the past, 
and the future, do concentrate themselves in 
the ever-present Now ; Avhatever of light the 
past has held, convergent to it, divergent 
from it. Only in it can anything be done. 
Only now is any bravery, any nobleness, any 
wise or heroic action, any good or beneficent 
thing, possible. Whatever thing must wait 
for the on-rolling of full years, before it can 
be done, will never be done, or will be done 
to no purpose. Whatever evil thing, need- 
ing to be abolished, can bridge over this pres- 
ent judgment-day, pass this present hour of 
doom, get men to w^ait for public opinion to 
become more unfavourable toward it, will 
run its full race, over generations of its slain 
victims, with more or less of power, and in- 
fluence, to the nether-worlds, and the ends of 
time. If we must wait, until it has grown 
great, — until it has become a gigantic, horri- 
ble Og of Bashan, before we may attack it, 
make this world free from it, — it will grow 



54 



THE HIGHEST LAW. 



too mighty for us ; our Gallows, Prison, Jail, 
will only vex it somewhat, keep it from sleep, 
increase its cunning. To-day is the work- 
day, the doom-day, the judgment-day. It is 
the nucleus of all the future. To-day we 
must strike at the conceptions, the begin- 
nings, the germs of evil, which this day 
unfolds ; strike at them bravely, unweariedly, 
unyieldingly ; remembering that we are close 
under the blue walls of heaven, and there 
eyes do regard us, mysteriously, intently. 
For, in this day, evil, as well as good, has 
birth, and quick equipment for defence. In 
this day, we are called upon to smite it. We 
shall see how we fail to do that. 

One need not live very long, in this world, 
without learning that a dealer, who has any 
commodity to sell, endeavours, so far as his 
power can go, to create a demand for that 
commodity. There is such a thiixg, in busi- 
ness, as establishing a trade. All kinds of 
business, good or bad, with suitable human 



TREASCRES BETTER 771 AN GOLD. 



55 



energy, foresight, persistence, do tend to 
establish themselves ; accommodate outer 
things to themselves ; crystallize, — one might 
say, — into solid financial successes. They 
make ways for themselves, orbits of their 
own, through the unknown, unwandered. 
But few new things come into this world 
because they are wanted here. They come 
into existence ; if possible, win their way, 
make themselves wanted. Failing in this, 
they take themselves swiftly out of the way, 
driven out by the general hate of things. 
Now and then, a book, or a machine, apolo- 
gizes for being made. It is claimed that it 
comes in answer to a demand. This is un- 
usual, however, and the claim is generally 
an audacious fallacy. The yearning for them 
\vas largely in the heart of the maker. They 
go out into the world to stir up demand, to 
make people think they are needed, and have 
come, just in the nick of time. Before the 
era of Railroads, this earth did not cry out 

6 



56 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

for them. That demand lay, smothered, in 
the onward deeps of time. Horse-power 
was sufficient. The demand for the electric 
telegraph, only rose, full-voiced, from the 
soul of Morse. These are the modern Alex- 
anders. They have conquered the world, 
and are its necessities. 

So, every man, who launches out into busi- 
ness, proposes, to himself, to make that busi- 
ness a necessity, a demanded one. Omission 
to do this is not usually considered indicative 
of shrewdness, and common sense, — is omin- 
ous of failure, and one of the rarest things 
now extant. Trade has become conquest ; 
has entered hotly into battle, and must tri- 
umph now, or die. Each inventor, each pro- 
ducer of new things, each vender, has become 
a kind of warrior, fighting, with much strat- 
egy, the unwilling, the incredulous ; subduing 
it, making it acknowledge some dependence 
on him. It is his work to make men want, or, 
at least, believe that they want, something 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 57 

he has power to give. If he is a gun-maker, 
he rejoices in war; if a tailor, changes of 
fashions are significant ; if a bookseller, he 
will never discourage a taste for reading. 

Bacchante, the liquor-vender, is no excep- 
tion to this rule. It is not according to the 
present order of things that Bacchante should 
be. He, too, desires that people shall like 
his vendibles ; employs whatever strategy he 
is master of, whatever artifice has promise, 
to make people like them ; studies, in that 
brain of his, how he may do it ; does do it. 
He, too, is a w^arrior, after his kind. He, 
too, depends upon conquest ; knows that his 
business must make its way ; become, to a 
sufficient number of men, a necessity ; be- 
come a necessity to as many men as possible. 
Bacchante, of all men, is sure of success, — 
knows that he is sure of success ; conquest 
of a human stomach, with such weapons as 
he has, is so much easier than conquest of a 
battle field, conquest of a weedy field, con- 



58 THE HIGHEST LAW, 

quest of any evil. Argalia had an enchanted 
lance, which mastered whomsoever it touch- 
ed. Bacchante also has a lance, — a liquid, 
enchanted lance, — the poison of death in it ; 
the fatality of mastery lying deep within it, 
hidden. Along the streets, Bacchante lies in 
wait ; displays the enchantment of his lance 
through coloured and clear glass, displays it 
prescribes it for all pains and aches and ills 
declares that in it there is m^ystery of cure 
and comfort, power and pleasure miraculous 
and inconceivable. At all hours of the day, 
and deep into night, in all frequented places, 
he lies in wait ; offering it as a protection 
from the cold ; as a protection, also, from the 
heat ; as a remedy for disappointment, an aid 
in every work of thought, or of the hands ; 
offering it as a joy-giver, an inspirer, a pro- 
moter of hilarit3^ Men are passing his lurk- 
ing-place every hour. Friends, newl3^-met, 
hilarious ; men, weary, returning from work, 
or weak, half-rested, going to work ; sad. 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 



59 



heavy-hearted, discouraged men ; men sick, 
in body and in soul, as all men are, at times ; 
restless, ambitious men, seeking the unattain- 
able ; idle men, for whose hands the Adver- 
sary findeth things to do ; all these are 
passing, hour after hour, within reach of the 
enchanted lance. Think you that none of 
these will turn in unto it, and be mastered by 
its enchantment ? I tell you, these are lured, 
conquered by Bacchante. They may resist 
the enticement to-day. To-morrow, also, 
they may resist it; but it does not take itself 
away. Some day the}^ will be weaker than 
to-day, more desperate than to-day, more 
careless than at present. Then Bacchante 
can make a beginning ; and a beginning once 
made, his w^ay is easier. He knows that his 
success in business, — which he considers the 
same as success in life, — depends upon his 
making such beginnings, and following the 
advantages they give him. If he can rouse, 
in a man, the promptings of appetite, a thirst 

6^ 



6o THE HIGHEST LA W, 

for his drugs, the bottom of that man's 
pocket will, some day, become very visible 
to him. Though, for the victim, his burning 
appetite leave only ashes and sorrow, for 
Bacchante it bringeth forth gold. He knows 
that the stronger, and more ungovernable, he 
can make that appetite, and the weaker the 
promptings of reason and wisdom become, 
the surer and mightier is his power over the 
deluded man, his victim. The constant drop- 
ping of the fevered man's money into the 
vender's till, keeps solemn music to the 
dropping away, out of that man's heart, of 
honour, manhood, and his heart's pure blood. 
It is Bacchante's business, — upon which he 
depends for the means of life, — to feed and 
inflame, by every influence he has power to 
wield, the passions, the beast-like instincts of 
men, that from such ruin as these ma}^ work, 
he may gather his treasures of gold. It is 
his law-sanctioned work, in most of these 
States, to utterly destroy all the manhood 



TI^EASURES BETTER TIIAX GOLD. 6 1 

and womanhood he can possibh^ get hold 
upon. So far as his business is concerned, a 
criminal is worth more to him than a poet, 
a gambler more than a life-full man. His 
business leads him, therefore, to endeavour to 
make as many criminals and gamblers as pos- 
sible, to interfere with the making of as manj^ 
honest, manly workers, and large-souled men, 
as possible. And he does interfere. He 
interferes into the liyes of many young men 
in our land, now worthless, hopelessly lost, 
because of his interposition. Prisons bear 
testimony to his interference, Records of 
crime tell terrible tales of him ; proclaim, in 
fact, that his business does, with fatality, con- 
quer its wa}^, does, oyer ruined men, go on, 
with certain conquest. 

Instances crowd themselyes upon me in 
which the liquor dealer has deliberately pur- 
posed to put himself in possession of the 
property of certain of his wealthy neigh- 
bours ; has boasted of his ability to do it; 



62 THE HIGHEST LAW, 

has done it. Not isolated cases, these ; but 
examples of what goes on in this land of 
ours, year after year ; eloquent with re- 
proachful testimony to the effect that multi- 
plied temptations, held invitingly before 
men, da}^ after day, through all the years, do 
have power, do lower men, through the 
abysses of passion, lust, appetite, deep into 
awful Hell. 

Bacchante's business is an enemy to his 
country ; a robber of his country ; a destroy- 
er of his country's wealth. Depending wholly 
upon the destruction of manhood, it would, 
if left to itself long enough, bring down his 
country to a level with poor Mexico. New 
York, swiftly hastening down thitherward, 
shall witness for me that this is true. Draft- 
riots are significant. Murders, revealing 
themselves at every sunrise, still more signifi- 
cant. The canonization of gamblers in rail- 
roads, the opening wide of the doors of 
respectable homes to well-dressed^ gold-own- 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 63 

ing, wine-drinking libertinage, not \yholly 
-without significance. The nomination, for 
President of these United States, of a noto- 
rious patron of Bacchante, lover of strange 
w^omen, gambler, — in the columns of a wide- 
ly-circulated New York daily paper, — by 
women, — soul-sickening, beyond significance. 
In this colossal ruin, colossal, awful pov- 
erty, of which these things speak loudly, 
Bacchante has had much to do. His busi- 
ness leads him to work out such ruin, to 
rejoice in such poverty. Men, robbed of 
their liberty ; sold into bondage to Appetite ; 
in thralldom to Lust ; these are his fruits. 
He lives by them, proposes to live by them. 
Mark me ! Moderate drinking does not sat- 
isfy him wholly. Think you that a quarter 
of a dollar will satisfy him, when he might 
have ten times that amount? Trust me, 
Bacchante is not that fool. Or, think you 
that there is some little conscience left in 
him yet? Trul}', there is some. There may 



64 THE HIGHEST LA W. 

be things he would not do. But for all that, 
^^ Business is business ! " says Bacchante. 
And he knows. Your moderate drinker is 
not, yet, very profitable to him. Your drunk- 
ard, man's semblance, gutter-man, is profita- 
ble to him. He knows that difference ; 
knows which men he lives by. He is not 
altogether fool. 

I demand that he shall not live by them. 
I demand that he shall not be allowed to rob 
this country of its wealth. Each weak man 
is my brother; God put a soul in him. No 
man has a right to take that soul away, 
enthroning there, instead, the triumphant 
Dionysius of base passion. Bacchante does 
take it away, does live by taking it away. I 
demand, therefore, that Bacchante shall be 
abolished. In the name of God, whose 
noblest work is thus trod into shame ; in the 
name of my country, whose wealth is thus 
destroyed ; in the name of my deluded, cap- 
tive, brother man, I say. Away with him ! 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 65 

Wipe out this business from the face of God's 
Earth, and let men live ! 

This man knows what he is doing; he 
knows his business well. For the money of 
poor Lazarus, — the manhood, the soul of him, 
— the dogs may lick his sores. He is legally 
wrought, if dreadful, ruin. Ruin not wholly 
covered up by saying ''ashes to ashes," 
above the poor wreck, at the last, but which 
leaves an eternal stain of disgrace upon my 
country, and her law-makers. This Bac- 
chante of ours can follow the letter of her 
present laws, and, at the same time, rob her, 
stab her to the heart, and she dare not say to 
him, '' Thou shalt not." 

We can not go on always in this way, de- 
spising manhood, suffering hell to swallow it 
up. Emerging from the domination of the 
strict laws, and stricter customs, of our fore- 
fathers ; emerging, also, on whirring wheels 
of new inventions, from thralldom to inces- 
sant hand-labour ; becoming more and more 



66 THE HIGHEST LAW, 

free ; man becomes more and more capable 
of ruin. Our only safety lies, not in any less 
degree of liberty, but in removal of the 
causes, temptations, which turn that liberty 
into a curse, man into bondage from within. 
In the city in which I write, — no worse than 
many cities, — about forty men are employed 
to put bad people in prison ; about an equal 
number, — Protestant, Roman, and Jewish, to 
induce people to be other than bad ; about 
Four Hundred to get money, by inducing 
them to be as bad as the absence of a living 
soul, and the presence of all sickening, fiery, 
cruel passion, can make them. Safety does 
not lie in that ; lies in very other than that. 
Get rid of the four hundred I Abolish them 
swiftly ! In that is safety. Crime will live 
to the day of such abolishment ; growing 
more dreadful, year after year, till it shall 
come. I write down these words for ever : 
it will live and grow till then. No rough 
treatment, after it has become crime, will 



TREASURES BETTER THAN GOLD. 6 



/ 



change it ; no choking, or prisoning, will blot 

t. It will live 
ishment shall come. 



it out. It will live and grow till such abol 



Let our countr}^ hasten the event ; let her, 
if she shall protect nothing else, protect her 
manhood, and her womanhood. Gehenna 
shall not then be in her midst. Acheron 
shall not then divide her ; but her way shall be 
as that of Al-Borak was, upward. Her wealth 
shall then be prized in all the cities of the 
earth ; prized above the jewels of its ro3'alty, 
being royalty itself. And when, adown deep 
time-abysses, all other Kingdoms, Kinghoods, 
as they must, shall fade away, her treasures, 
even then, shall be prized, and her name 
praised, in a City whose Maker and Builder 
is King of kings. 



The Province of Law. 



.^^^■ 



" For all things which regard the well-being and justice 
of a state are pre-ordained and established in the nature of 
the individual. Of these, it behooves that the merely human, 
(the temporal and fluxional) should be subordinated to the 
divine in man, and the divine in like manner to the Supreme 
Mind, so however that the state is not to regulate its actions 
by reference to any particular form or fragments of virtue, 
but must fix its eye on that virtue which is the abiding 
spirit, and (as it were) substratum in all the virtues, as on a 
law that is in itself legislative." Plato. 

" It were absurd to suppose that individuals should be 
under a law of moral obligation, and yet that a million of 
the same individuals acting collectively, or through repre- 
sentatives, should be exempt from all law." 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PROVINCE OF LAW. 

Glimmering down through history, from 
the beginning of human society, — the early 
counseling of man with man, as to the means 
and methods of government, — is an idea of 
law which recognizes and respects only the 
enforced will of the strongest. Tyrannous 
and unjust it might be, in all its workings ; 
deathful to the liberty of man ; yet it was 
law. The power of muscular energy, the 
force of the club, was in it, and the world, in 
pagan childhood, knew no other law. Laws 
from the Almighty Lawgiver, on pages of 
stone, breathed, to rebellious Israel, the 
accent of power beyond that of man. The 

7^ 



72 



THE HIGHEST LA W, 



parting of the Red-Sea waves ; the drowning 
death which rushed upon Egyptian hosts ; 
the clouded, yet light-flashing, thunders of 
Mount Sinai, when the voice of the trumpet 
was loud ; these were significant of Some- 
thing, all-powerful. When passing ages dim- 
med both memory and history of these, — as 
they do dim all things, — some new miracle 
of power assured perverse and straying 
hearts, that one Kingship was never abdi- 
cated, never with any safety, forgotten, or 
despised. The Bush, where the awful Pres- 
ence flamed ; the preceding Pillar, of altern- 
ate Flame and Cloud ; the bitter Marah- 
waters, for man's sake, tree-sweetened; the 
fall of Manna-frost ; the smiting of the 
Horeb-rock ; these published evidence of 
the power of God, and the people which 
were led thus to believe in Him, could only 
be governed, therefore, by Theocracy. Law 
and power were one ; one in a better sense 
then, than now. God's power was some- 



THE PROVINCE OF LAW. 73 

times thought of then, even in government. 
Politicians had not yet arisen. 

They were destined to arise. Man's power 
was to rule instead of God's. Force was to 
make the weak the servants of the strong. 
Out of the folds of onward time, giant 
tyranny, aristocracies of power, chivalries, 
God-forgetting, man-dishonouring laws, and 
semblances of law, were to fall, curse-wise, 
upon this earth. They have fallen. Poli- 
ticians did arise ; did rule by virtue of their 
own power ; did teach that they, instead of 
God, were to be followed ; did, by means of 
physical force, by vigorous use of sword and 
spear, compel men to obey them ; did place 
reliance in might, instead of right ; did con- 
vince this world, for a time, that law was the 
will of any man able to enforce it. 

This idea of law came down, untouched, 
through Dark Ages, days of chivalry, to 
have its influence upon the civilization of far 
better and brighter centuries. Nevertheless, 



74 



THE HIGHEST LAW, 



truer and worthier forms of religious and 
political thought than could have been known, 
or even dreamed of, in the days of its origin, 
were preparing silently the way for its suc- 
cessor. Truth and her defenders, weak in 
all physical and material things, trembling 
and fearful, terribly scourged by the oppress- 
ive power of the giant then named Law, had 
ever a strange fore-pointing to a time, when 
the royalty of Truth herself should be ac- 
knowledged, and a place given her, at the 
right hand of Law, with Justice, stern-eyed 
and mighty, sitting upon the left, and the 
world, in its Palingenesis, before them. That 
time must come. The disorders of to-day, 
the revolutions whose fires have hardly yet 
gone out, with others, it may be, to come, are 
but to advance it. This, at least, do they 
teach us, as, aided by the wisest voices that 
are in us, we reflect upon them. The un- 
mourned death of Chivalry, the unwept 
burial of her infamous, beastly, and bloody 



THE PROVINCE OE LAW, -5 

codes, the gradual, but sure, extinction of 
human slavery, and the continual waning of 
all oppressive power, point forward to a time 
when spurious forms of law, upheld by 
nothing but material force, shall find the 
advancing world against them, and shall see 
their claims to the sacred right of govern- 
ment despised and thrust away. Even now, 
the remnants of the aristocracy of power 
sit uneasily upon their thrones, dreading 
the hurricane sure to come, w^hich shall 
sweep away the broken ruins of their former 
precedence and glory. Physical power, en- 
abling the self-constituted lord to seize upon 
the treasures of his inferiors, and to compel 
them to pay tribute to himself, for such privi- 
leges as it was for his interest to grant, and 
such duties as it pleased him to impose, soon 
passed into, or rather, united to itself, the 
power of wealth, and by this comfortable 
alliance, sought to perpetuate itself, and con- 
trol forever the reins of human government. 



76 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

But even this double and degenerate aristoc- 
racy, suits not with the spirit of the present 
years. Revolution is its death. Wherever 
it exists, there is a smouldering volcano 
underneath, waiting patiently its time. In- 
evitable necessity seems to be against it, and 
its subjects fret and murmur, secretly and 
threateningly, under the unjust laws it makes. 
The world is breaking away from its allegi- 
ance to the law of the strongest, and slow- 
ly, — perhaps, in the widest sense, uncon- 
sciously, — is seeking for Justice and Truth 
to rule over us. 

In the transition-days, not yet gone by, it 
need not surprise us that, having struggled, 
in peace and war, to break away from this 
wrong idea of government, and to get back, 
once more, to God's methods, — the multi- 
tudes, which rule us, have an indistinct, or 
inadequate, notion of the nature, province, 
and authority of law. It is indeed under- 
stood that law is the offspring of some 



THE PRO VINCE OF LA W. 



77 



proclive governing power in the people them- 
selves. Democracy adheres to that ; insists 
that. It is the chief article in its creed, the 
one thing Democracy will die, if necessary, 
in defence of. Exactly what constitutes this 
governing power, Democracy is not so cer- 
tain about ; is very uncertain about ; has 
hardly stopped to think about. It will be 
wise for Democracy, however, to think about 
that ; to give its whole thought, for some 
time to come, to just that; to decide that, 
before it has tried many experiments with 
itself. Democracy has had a very dim idea 
that the highest law conceivable is the ex- 
pression of the will of the majority. This, 
verily, is law. But it may be unjust law ; 
it may be a new definition of the law of 
force. Suppose that upon Robinson Crusoe's 
island or some other island equally desolate, 
three men, instead of one, are cast away. 
They do naturally form, for themselves, a 
kind of government. The will of the major- 



78 THE HIGHEST LA W. 

ity may be enforced. Two men may govern 
the three men. But suppose the two w^ho 
shall happen to agree, declare that the one 
man shall work for the three, support them 
in idleness, be their servant ; and this man, 
being of Adam's seed, and Democratic, shall 
very plainly object; and the passions of the 
other two becoming aroused, they decide 
that he shall be executed, hung there, on that 
island, between heaven and earth. Democ- 
racy, true to her ordinary definitions, must 
call this, vindication of high law. True tp 
something in me, higher than Democracy, I 
must call it a ver}^ culpable murder. Democ- 
racy herself, true to her name, would so call 
it. It is not vindication of law. It is tri- 
umph of base passion, over law ; lawlessness. 
Something beyond mere will must be taken 
into our account. A mule is said to have, at 
times, very much of that ; and to be, not very 
governable. Bipedal mules are not a great 
improvement upon the other varieties ; are, 



THE PROVINCE OE LAW. 



7.9 



also, not very governable, not very orderly. 
Something further must grow into our mule, 
to make him a man ; to make him a safe man 
to govern us, even to counsel us. 

Democracy helps us much, however. De- 
mocracy well understood, would help us 
more. It is much that we do understand, 
and agree, that the governing powder, the 
supremest Lex, is in the people. We may, 
by searching thoughtfully among the facul- 
ties, capabilities, mysteries, of human nature, 
find out, to our satisfaction, what this gov- 
erning power, in reality, is; may find, beyond 
this, that this power, does, with certainty, 
discover to us its whole province, bearing, 
authority, and significance. 

It is required, then, to find, in the human 
constitution, the forces which so act upon 
human conduct, as to determine its whole 
quality and influence. 

In order to do this, I am obliged to confine 
my investigations to one individual at a time, 

8 



8o THE HIGHEST LAW. 

searching his nature as thoroughly as I may, 
for that inward majesty and power, to the 
dictates and decisions of which, he should 
always be obedient. I am required to find, 
in fact, his internal Judge and King, the in- 
visible Messenger of God to the human soul, 
to which, as to God himself, he must be obe- 
dient and true. 

I ask then, to what, within myself, should 
I be subject? From instincts, controlled by 
no stronger and purer forces than themselves, 
instincts which do assert themselves within 
me, though, in a measure, rightly guided and 
restrained, I humbly hope ; from impulses, 
unreasoned, unhallowed, like those to which 
I know^ the brute is no stranger, and the man 
nearest the brute, no enemy ; from appetites 
necessary, and innocent, in their natural con- 
dition, yet perverted and abused, by man, so 
far as the ingenuity, and the power of man, 
can abuse and pervert ; as well as from those 
wholly acquired, unnatural, foreign and re- 



THE PROVINCE OF LAW. gl 

piilsive, to ever}' fibre of the constitution I 
inherited from God ; from passions, fierce, 
malignant, and revengeful, which tear away, 
out of my soul, the Image which I believe I 
am most proud to bear ; from selfish and 
sensual longings, covetous and proud desires ; 
from false, adulterous, and avaricious prompt- 
ings ; from vanity and the ardent lust for 
authority and power ; from each and all of 
these, and from the love of them, O, Holy, 
Blessed God, deliver me ! Let me neither 
bow down to them, nor serve them. Let 
them not, in any way, have dominion over 
me. May I be cursed of all men, as I shall 
deserve, if I shall ever dare to plead for any 
of these to rule, or to express themselves in 
human law. What can I pray, but that Con- 
science and Reason may govern both, them 
and me? That Conscience and Reason may 
urge ni}^ will to action, and none of these 
whatever? 

For what purpose, — when I came into this 



82 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

troubled and tempting world, — was a faculty 
placed within me, teaching right from wrong, 
justice from injustice, — urging me, of itself, 
always to do the right, and never to do the 
wrong ; for what purpose was given unto me 
this separate faculty, apparently as deathless, 
and eternal, as any of those powers which 
lead me to claim the right to be, but that 
this power, b}^ its permitted influence on the 
will, might govern me ? 

For what purpose was given me the power 
of forming firm and positive convictions ; of 
arriving at a knowledge of truths above 
sense ; of learning of the existence of things, 
Avhich eye can not see, nor ear hear, nor out- 
ward sense in any way discern ; if not that 
this spirit of truth might guide me, and gov- 
ern me ? 

These two distinct and wonderful powers 
of my nature, are given me for the right gov- 
erning of m}^ conduct, and the right building 
of ni}' life. They do continually restrain my 



THE PROVINCE OF LAW. 83 

impulses, appetites, and passions, acting upon, 
and through, the will, for this very purpose. 
If there be an}' governing power within me, 
then my will, voluntarily subject to these, 
must be that power. And as I, in this way, 
am capable of governing the unruly and 
rebellious forces of my own nature, I am, to 
the same extent, capable of taking part in the 
government of those, who, refusing to submit 
to either the convictions of Reason, or the 
decisions and dictates of Conscience, thereby 
subject themselves to the operation of the 
rightly-guided, collective will of the societ}' 
in which they may be found. "^ 

Just and true law, therefore, may be de- 
fined as the authoritative expression, and 
enforcement, of human will, subject to, and 



* I sincerely beg the reader's pardon for talking so freely 
of myself. It seemed necessary for me to refer to one, whose 
weaknesses, and capabilities, I am supposed to be most 
thoroughl}^ acquainted with, and whose just and thorough 
government, I confess to be one of the chief troubles, as 
well as studies, of my life. 

8* 



84 



THE HIGHEST LA W. 



guided by, both Conscience and Reason. It 
is, in effect, the still, eternal voice of the 
divine in man, asserting, and enforcing itself, 
over the instincts and passions of human 
nature ; and, in this sentence, we have an 
intimation of the true Province of Law, of 
its office, and full purpose. There are parts 
of our nature, which, in the present condi- 
tion of humanity, must be, by some power, 
restrained and controlled ; and this restraint 
and control may be set up, and forcibly main- 
tained, in the sacred name of Liberty. If the 
individual himself, neglects, or refuses, to ex- 
ercise this power, allowing the strong anchor 
of natural law to rust and weaken, in the 
slimy slavery of sin, so that it holds him not 
to Justice and to God, — then human law, for 
his sake, and the protection of society, must 
interpose its strong and mighty arm, between 
him and his unbridled lusts, and take the 
place, in such manner as may be possible, of 
that natural and better government, which he 



THE PROVINCE OF LAW 



85 



no longer can be trusted to obey. When 
he neglects to be, longer, a '' a law unto him- 
self," for him law must be made ; for, if an}^ 
higher power than his own bad impulses, is 
ever to prevail upon him, or govern him, that 
power must be supplied from without, in such 
manner, and with such weight of authority, 
that he can not well resist it. Possibh^ — if 
this external force can seize upon, and im- 
prison, the lawless passions which enslave 
and bind his will, and make him thus a ser- 
vant of the Adversary, — the outraged princes 
of his soul ma}^ then return, to govern him 
once more. In this manner, law ma}' be, as 
it indeed should be, a faithful servant of 
reform, instead of an instrument of revenge, 
used at the caprice of him who may have 
the power to wield it. It may also be, to 
a certain extent, precautionarj^, — preventing 
the making of criminals, as well as restrain- 
ing the confirmed and dangerous ones ; and 
3^et, holding even before these, the possibilitj^ 



86 THE HIGHEST LA W. 

of reformation, to the last, doing all that any 
power outside their own chaotic hearts can 
do, to bring about this much-desired result ; 
taking away temptations to the evils, pre- 
venting, as far as may be prevented, the 
further exercise of the unnatural lusts, and 
the further abuse of the instincts, which, 
misguided and ungoverned, have led them so 
astray ; adding always instigations toward 
good, and encouraging continually, every 
inclination to return to that right, and self- 
governed condition, so far fallen away from. 
When law is not the offspring of these two 
permanent forces of human nature, it be- 
comes, in reality, only the law of the strong- 
est. Artfully disguised, in harmless and 
innocent sheep's clothing, it may be, yet the 
wolf still, ravenous and fierce, taking strange 
liberties, in the confidence given it by supe- 
rior power. For, if it be not guided by 
reason, or moral sense, it is the servant of 
selfish and sensitive desires, seeking gratifi- 



THE PROVIXCE OF LAW. ^y 

cation at the expense of others, who will, in 
no wise, consent to be robbed of their pos- 
sessions, or their liberties, for the gratifica- 
tion of their enemies or neighbours, and will 
be, onl}' when the power brought to bear 
upon them, for this purpose, can not be suc- 
cessfully resisted. So far as our law is not 
the kind of law I have endeavoured to define, 
so far it is the law of superior human power, 
and nothing else. The law that Satan may 
devise, and find knaves and fools enough to 
pass, and execute. 

So far as it is the kind of law I have 
defined, so far it is true law, just law, worth}' 
of its name ; so far it is its province to 
restrain the selfishness, the avarice, the un- 
meditated impulses, and unreasoning pas- 
sions, of men and women ; to direct their 
ungoverned faculties to useful and unsinful 
service, and to make it possible for them, 
once more, to govern themselves. 

Our laws against stealing I suppose to be 



88 ^^^ HIGHEST LA W, 

for the purpose of restraining, — or prevent- 
ing the overgrowth and over-balance of, — the 
desire of possession, in order that the prop- 
ert}^ of individuals may be safe, and the more 
precious property of the State, uncorrupted 
and safe, also. Our statutes against murder 
should restrain the revengeful, malicious, and 
deadly passions of men ; take the place, so far 
as any outward power may, of the inward 
powers God gave them, for their government. 
Our enactments against slander, bigamy, 
robbery, should aim to restrain the angry, 
selfish, and covetous instincts of individuals, 
and make them subject to the governing 
power of the individuals themselves ; or of 
the State, if their power fails. 

The governing power of the State may be 
made to influence the conduct of its mem- 
bers in two ways. 

I. By sure and thorough abolishment of 
the conditions, temptations, and incitements 
which give beginning, or encouragement, to 



THE PROVINCE OF LAW. gc^ 

overpowering motives in tlie mind of the 
individual. 

2. By direct prohibitions, or restrictions, 
enforced, not only by implied appeal to all 
considerations of honour, obedience, personal 
or public safety, but by certainty of the for- 
feiture, — in cases of willful disobedience, — of 
so much outward liberty as may be necessary, 
in order to ensure the safety of society. 

I. That the power of law may be exerted, 
in the manner, and for the purpose, I have 
here first indicated, is a truth which had not 
dawned upon early law. The law of the 
kick and the blow, the law of force, was 
always untimely. Its authors were never 
concerned about the roots of things. They 
were never so thinking as that. To take 
away the hindrances to self-government, to 
make man grandly capable of governing him- 
self, this was beyond the Omega of their 
thought. Giant heathenism ; the most tyran- 
nical of all tyrannies ; the ungodliest of all 



90 



THE HIGHEST LA W. 



statutes, all customs ; these are all character- 
ized by ominous omission to do anything 
with the causes of lawlessness, the agencies 
which lure men ; and by severity of vindic- 
tive penalties, when, — the wrong disposition 
having been already established, — it is too 
late for them to avail. You can measure any 
government, any society, any man, by this 
standard, the world over. 

The world is always too ready to condemn ; 
too slow to teach, and guide, and throw 
around its Aveak ones, the helpful and pro- 
tecting arms. We are readier with our 
Anathemas, than with our Christianity. We 
find it easy enough to curse the fallen, but 
we never take away the stumbling blocks, 
nor close up the roads to the precipices. 
Even the very men who have wrought the 
sad ruin of poor Fatima, are always most 
eager to sew up the sack, drop her into the 
Bosphorus. The man who is, in his heart, 
least sinless, is ready to cast the first stone, 



THE PROVINCE OF LAW. qi 

and the heaviest. The incendiary drops the 
torch, joins in the cry of '' Fire !" Many 
people get their reputation for virtue, high 
honour, in this way. When a man can get 
it in no other way, this is his inevitable 
strategy. Only high, thinking, genuine 
Christian society, goes back to the begin- 
nings of things ; demands that bad hearts, 
and the fogs which hover between virtue and 
vice, hiding their outlines, and making bad 
hearts, shall not be. Only Christian, pro- 
gressive influences seek to affect the '' seed 
of act." All others tolerate evil, until it has 
attained its full growth, become somewhat 
unendurable. Ordinarily the dunghill may 
be welcome, if it does not announce itself. If 
the liquor-drinker is not dead drunk in so- 
ciety's parlor, society sees nothing but man- 
hood and respectability in him ; and the 
drunkard-maker, — he is not wholly disreputa- 
ble to men. Christianity, the saving power, 
religion of beginnings, is not very well 

9 



92 



THE HIGHEST LAW. 



appreciated by some ; is least appreciated, it 
seems, by law-makers, and the unthinking, 
unreflective masses. This world has much 
to learn, and much 'to do, before, — so far as 
human agency goes, — it will ever be a very 
glorious world. 

Law will have to be more prevenient ; 
going before men ; taking out of the way the 
things they fall by, die by. This is the inex- 
orable demand of the present, slowly accom- 
plishing itself. It will rely, in the future, 
not much upon arbitrary command, swiftly 
wreaking its revenge upon all disobedience ; 
but upon its own prevenient powder, its own 
inherent efficiency to save. It will more and 
more approximate to the one purpose of 
prevention, rather than retribution ; of pres- 
ervation, rather than the satisfaction of re- 



venge. 



Every human agency, to be effective, must 
be timely ; must strike at the wrong to be 
overpowered, when it is capable of being 



THE PROVINCE OF LAW. 



93 



conquered ; must plant its germs of good 
when circumstances shall favour, rather than 
hinder, their growth ; and I know of no case 
in which law can justly attempt the removal 
of any glaring evil, or flagrant wrong, in 
which it might not have interfered, more 
wisely and effectively, with the beginning of 
that evil, the incitements to that wrong. If 
it has any right to attempt the removal of 
crime, it has also a much better right to de- 
molish the diabolical machinery which manu- 
factures crime ; the saloons, hells, sin-acade- 
mies, where men are drilled, taught in crime, 
just as effectively as our West Point cadets 
are disciplined in military science. And, 
until our laws are framed so as to accomplish 
this demolishment, they only represent Her- 
cules, without his brand, cutting away at the 
ever-multiplying heads of the Hydra, with 
the prospect of such work, stretching on 
before him to the end of time. We have yet 
to learn this lesson ; have yet to put into the 



Q4 THE HIGHEST LA W. 

hands of Hercules, his brand ; or, in default 
of this, to run our full length, over ruin 
which proclaims our lack of knowledge and 
of heroism, to the silent regions of the dead, 
from w^hence the three-headed Dog prohibits 
all return. 

If we would act upon men for the right 
governing of their conduct, if we would 
remove the wrong conditions of society, we 
must begin by removing, first of all, the 
causes of these wrong conditions. We must 
remove the Dipsas from our midst, abolish 
him utterly, — be rid of him, and his influ- 
ence. We must help man to govern himself; 
to qualify himself to govern others. 

We have found the highest law to be the 
power of reason and of moral sense, assert- 
ing itself, accomplishing itself, over the pas- 
sions, which, in their excess, prevent self- 
government and obedience to law. It must 
act to prevent such excess ; act, with certain- 
ty, against all influences which encourage 



THE PRO VIXCE OF LA W. 



95 



such excess ; gar quick riddance of whatever 
deluding Lamia ma}- seek to interfere with 
man's allegiance to them, whatever phantasm 
mav take possession of his soul to oppose 
them. If law has any mission, or any pur- 
pose, this, beyond all reasonable debate, is its 
true province. 

What shall I sa}', then, of law which pro- 
fesses to govern man, and at the same time 
sanctions that which tends to make man 
ungovernable ; which professes to restrain 
the evil passions of men, and yet, permits, 
licenses^ a business which can exist only by 
firing those passions beyond restraint ; of 
law which is not the power of the moral, or 
reasoning faculty, but which arraj^s itself 
against these ? I can say but this : that it is 
not true law ; that it is, rather, un-law ; that 
it is the power which rolls on this countrj^, 
in a guilt-darkened, blood-marked way to- 
ward its ruin, — heaving up into plainer sight, 
at every rising of God's sun, the lawless and 



9^ 



g6 THE HIGHEST LAV/. 

anarchic Ruin-Empire, whither, if it do not 
change itself, we shall land, and in which, in 
default of speedy change, to make an end of 
ourselves, will be our privilege, — our fate. 

I do not believe we shall land there. I 
believe we shall surely change our laws. If 
we do not change them, I do not simply 
believe, I know what awaits us. 

Overpowering motives, opposed to law, 
must and do arise continually from that con- 
dition of society which holds ever before 
men an appeal to the appetites of them, and 
a promise of pleasure. It is entirely within 
the province of law to interfere with that 
condition, to swiftly abolish it. Until it can 
do that, it is a semblance of law, bearing and 
disgracing its name, omitting to do its work. 
And the sooner such semblance, and all other 
semblances, and illusions, are erased from the 
statute books, and from God's whole Earth, 
the better it will be for that Earth. It needs 
such erasement sadly, just now. 



THE PROVINCE OE LAW. gy 

Deep down below the surfaces of things 
are their life-roots ; starting there, growing 
there, getting strong hold there. Down 
there every evil which has leafage, branch- 
age, or fruitage, in this world, has wide- 
spreading under-growth, sustaining it. Law 
must probe things ; lay them bare ; strike the 
death of sure abolishment swifth^ home to 
their evil undergrowths ; leave preferable 
vacancy, and, in its good time, more prefer- 
able roots of honour, life, righteousness, to 
fill their places. 

2. Even prevenient law must be also pro- 
hibitive, sa3dng to all wrong things, strug- 
gling for beginning, " Thou shalt not begin I" 
Saj'ing, with all the emphasis possible to it, 
to all wrong things, already struggled up into 
beginning, " By the power that is in me, thou 
shalt surely die!" Sa34ng this especially, to 
all evil powers which lead naturalh' to inevi- 
table, well-known, greater evils, — and which 
are, in themselves, germs of more deathful 



98 THE HIGHEST LAW, 

Avrong, or roots of more soul-destroying, dan- 
gerous influences. Law may not only pro- 
vide that men shall not be tempted, but, in 
such provision, it must command others not 
to tempt them. It may not only say, '' Woe 
unto him by whom the offence cometh!" It 
may say, also, for the safety of men, '' Woe 
be unto the offender !" 

These are the methods in which high and 
honourable law^ may act, for the safety, and 
the government, of men ; may act harmoni- 
ously, wisely, justly, and effectively ; may 
act, not with any danger to the highest 
degree of liberty, but act to secure it. So 
acting, it may liberate the captive, the sin- 
enchanted ; may even bind the Satanic cap- 
tor, rid this earth of the illusive charms 
which enable Mephistopheles to bind, in 
death-fetters, the souls of men, send them 
forth, conscienceless and reasonless, chained 
to destroying appetite, and the passions and 
malignities which know no law. 



THE PROVIXCE OF LAW. gg 

Avarice sometimes drives a dreadful busi- 
ness. It does not always bow to the spirit- 
power above it. Conscience, holding her 
high-given sceptre above, is too often un- 
heard, unheeded ; her heavenly voices drown- 
ed in the turmoil of trade ; her pleadings, 
subduements, resisted by the selfish passions 
working on below it. Reason, too, the infal- 
lible prophet of God in the soul of man, 
sometimes shares the fate of God's other 
prophets, and, in her own soul-country, is 
without due honour. Men fix upon earth as 
a finality ; onl}^ dream of heaven as an uncer- 
tain shadow of the sunset of life, not as a 
continuing country ; and, in this earth, 
gather the dust of it, grope in the mire of it, 
follow its phantasms, as if there were no 
God, unheeding His holy prophet. Law 
must place herself, not on the side of Ava- 
rice, not on the side of an}' down-tending 
appetite, but on the side of the unheard, 
prophetic, denied, princes. Against the ava- 



lOO THE HIGHEST LA W, 

rice of the liquor-dealer, should it array itself, 
taking the part of his conscience, fighting 
for his reason, preventing him from rob- 
bing other men of the power of self-govern- 
ment."^ Were not his business established, 
and men accustomed to it, hardened to it, 
silenced by its conquest, or bound in a fatal 
embrace with it, 1 should not need to urge 
this. A similar business, not yet established, 
having yet to conquer its way, would hardly, 
in a civilized country, in this age of the 
world, get itself established. 

For example, take this : A man undertakes 
to sell, in different parts of the country, 

'^ I do not insist that every liquor-drinker is inevitably a 
criminal, or likely to become one. He is only sure to lose 
more or less of the power of self-government, — to lose pow- 
er over his passions. The influence of a single glass of 
wine, in stimulating the appetites of the senses, is well 
known. People who boast of their power over themselves, 
must remember that power of the will, does not enable the 
human stomach to resist the action of drugs. The man who 
takes sufficient doses of Ipecacuanha, will be nauseated, in 
spite of his will. He who takes Prussic Acid will be 
poisoned. In like manner, sufficient doses of Alcohol take 
away self-restraint, making passion, feeling, supreme over 
will. 



THE PROVIXCE OF LAW. iqi 

infected clothing, lined, one might say, with 
Cholera or Yellow Fever. Government does 
not license him. Law swiftly pounces upon 
his business ; works quick subduement of his 
power : speedily abolishes his trade ; does 
not content itself with punishing his victims. 
But when thousands of dealers, more ava- 
ricious, and more successful, distribute Red 
Fever through all the land, law maintains 
ominous silence, and Satan's work goes on."^ 
This fever, too, works death ; slowly and 
surely does work it ; not speedy, innocent 
death, which brave men face, and good men 
dare to meet ; but clouded, guilty, awful 
death ; death sometimes, of innocent men, to 
whom in the darkness, it brings violence and 
murder; death sometimes of crazed men, 
who were, by assistance of this maddening 
fever, their own mad murderers ; death 
oftener of guilty men, whose souls it has 

"^ " Stimulation (alcoholic) is fever, and nothing else." 

R. T. Trall, M.D. 



I02 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

burned away, whose manhood it has ruined ; 
death oftenest of all, which is death-in-life, 
the sickening existence of dethroned Nebu- 
chadnezzars, created in God's image, given a 
soul, which, in its ruin, leaves the fallen king 
of an Earth-empire, less than king, less than 
man. Every man, uncontaminated, may be 
such a king ; or in slavery to himself, may be 
unmanned. When law, like an ancient peo- 
ple, breaking awa}^ from bondage to the 
selfish and passionate Pharaohs of bad mens' 
hearts, follows God, as veiled in Conscience 
and in Reason, he goes before ; becomes in 
reality, His servant ; then this earth shall be 
a land of promise, a land of souls. 

English law, getting an impulse in the 
right direction, went down into the cramped, 
offensive mines of England, where men, hope- 
less and helpless, — naked children, prema- 
turely grown old, — women, bony and flesh- 
less, transformed into miserable beasts of 
burden, — wasted their lives, for the gratifica- 



THE PROVIXCE OF LAW. 



103 



tion of English avarice. Men said it could 
never succeed, — should not succeed. Against 
opposition and protest, it sent its power 
down deep into earth, and lifted the yokes 
from the necks of the '' White Slaves of 
England," for ever. 

It went into factories, busy as death, and 
humming w^ith Babel-tongued machines ; op- 
posed there, too, the avarice of men ; declared 
that into fabrics for the living, should not be 
w^oven the boyish and girlish life-threads of 
the dying and dead. 

America has work for it to do. Work 
which must be done. The history of this 
world does audibly tell us, reader, that 
nations have died, and that others must die. 
It does tell us, with audible emphasis, that 
the ignoblest, ungodliest people, — that which 
cultivates passion, and loses reverence for 
God and man, is, almost invariably, first to 
seek, in the Death-Realms, — departed Greece 
and Rome, gone down with their Persephone 

10 



I04 



THE HIGHEST LAW, 



for ever. And if this x\merica, despising the 
eternal laws, and justices, and truths, still 
keeps her wa}^ thitherward, you and I will 
have cause to thank God, if we are out of it 
before it gets there. Paradise will be better 
for us, my friend, much better. 



Things to be Added 



♦♦♦- 



" But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteous- 
ness ; and all these things shall be- added unto you." 

A FoRGOTTEx Book. 



CHAPTER III. 

THINGS TO BE ADDED. 

Through the Epicureanisms, Midas-long- 
ings, illusions of the present time, the truths, 
facts, realities of life, show themselves none 
too clearly. We cloud them in things which 
are not realities. Our own prejudices, habits 
of life and thought, do envelope them, tinge 
them to their own colour; even at the ex- 
pense of violence, accommodate them to 
themselves. There is one philosophy w^hich 
proves things ; but the philosophy most in 
use, bends things to our own stubborn 
notions. The man who is getting money by 
a business which I condemn, allows the fact 
that he is getting money, to outweigh all the 

lO* 



I08 ^-^^ HIGHEST LAW. 

logic heaven or earth may furnish. The Dol- 
lar is his King ; if he imagines that I am 
nnloyal to that, he refuses to hear me. He 
will follow that King if he lives by it, — if he 
dies by it. He thinks it will be good for him 
to do so. That is one of the illusions. He 
bends heaven and earth to that. 

I am not wholly unloyal to this King. I 
believe in him. So far as men may live by 
him, get larger or better life by means of 
him, so far I will defend him. When men 
begin to die by him, — when the live, blood- 
w^arming hearts of men begin to dwindle out 
of them because of him,— I shall cease to 
defend him. I do not believe in the death of 
men. It does not appear to me as a good 
thing. Getting out of this world, getting 
over the River, is not wholly mournful. 
Real death, — nobleness getting itself out of 
all worlds ; getting itself swiftly nowhere ; 
this is altogether lamentable. This is not 
good for men. So far as the power of this 



THIXGS TO BE ADDED. 109 

King leads to death, it is not good for men 
to follow him ; so far his power is worse than 
wasted. It is worth much to know this. It 
will help us to see things clearlier. 

Every owner of property is annually taxed 
for the support of governing institutions. 
He pays his money promptly ; generally 
pays it willingly. He knows that men may 
live by that, — that he, himself, lives more 
securely by it. He pays his butcher, grocer, 
workman, certain amounts yearly, quarterl}^, 
or monthly. That also helps him to live. 
Rhythmic words, or words only magical 
through truth, instead of rh3'me ; great 
thoughts, or good thoughts, bound in con- 
venient books, — more or less holy oracles, to 
be consulted when men have need of coun- 
sel ; educational institutions, for the benefit 
of coming men and women ; preached words ; 
artful or finely fashioned adornings, speaking 
a language to the inmiost man ; things which 
minister to the real comfort of the soul, or of 



no THE HIGHEST LAW. 

the outer man ; these, also, are things by 
which men may live nobler life. Money 
given for these, is not wasted, — is wisely 
given. So long as any king gives these to 
men, he is a good thing on this earth. 

Our National Debt has been considered a 
mountainous obstacle in the way of .our pros- 
perity. It is a thing which has troubled us 
exceedingly. Men murmured frowningly at 
the making of it ; were almost ready to run 
desperate risks, — to open all the doors to 
lawlessness, anarchy, ruin, — rather than make 
it. Yet it is the price of life, — of national 
life, including the safety, and opportunity for 
the advancement of all life. With it we 
overthrew one of the forces of death. 

We are not at peace yet. Another Confed- 
eracy is threatening to destroy us, and will 
destroy us, if we do not swiftly make an end 
of it. A Sin-Confederacy swallows up mil- 
lions of dollars, every time we journey round 
the sun ; and the treasures which it uses are 



THIXGS TO BE ADDED. i i i 

not the price of life, but instruments of death. 
The wages of sin are as certain now as they 
were when Paul preached. The}^ are still 
death, instead of life. Six Hundred Millions 
of Dollars working death, — this is the Na- 
tional Debt, National Curse, we have most 
cause to dread. "^ A confederac}' which 
destroys men, body and soul; which leads 
men into rebellion against all good govern- 
ment ; this is the confederacy to be got rid 
of now. 

Into this wasted Six Hundred Millions 
goes some portion of the gainage of every 
one of us. Every article we buy is burdened 
with the influence of a curse. It makes 
every yard of cloth, or pound of food, which 
in this land is bought and sold, as heavy 



* The figures given in this book are all somewhat less 
than the actual truth, except in cases where the opportu- 
nities for obtaining them are so perfect that the actual figures 
are beyond all question. Commissioner Wells is of the 
opinion that the retail liquor trade reaches $800,000,000 
annually. The figures above given, are, he says, within 
the truth. 



112 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

with povert}' which we must all support, 
and overwork which we must pay for, as it 
is with honestly woven fabric in the one 
case, and honestly grown fibre in the other. 
Our social atmosphere is laden with the 
stench of dying souls. We are accustomed 
to it, and ever}^ day are paying men to keep 
the uncharneled dead continually in our 
midst. Two Million human souls in this 
great nation, at this hour, are going about, 
dead or dying, and uncharneled. Two 
Million human souls have a devil in them. 
Sixty Thousand are hurried out of time by 
this devil ; hurried on into the Unlimited, 
every time we ride this globe around the 
sun. Dungeoned by him, in living tombs 
for living-dead men, are One Hundred Thou- 
sand more ; while public charitable institu- 
tions hold an additional Hundred Thousand 
vdctims. Five Hundred suicides and an 
equal number of murders, caused every year 
by this devil in men, must still be added to 



THIXGS TO BE ADDED. 113 

the terrible death-record, and then it is not 
complete. "^^ Six Hundred Millions of Dol- 
lars do have very potent death-power in 
them, in this case ; do make that power felt 
in this glorious countr}' ; do reach every 
living man and woman with it. 

" The land of the free, and the home of the brave," 

sounds very well in song. How is it in 
fact? Verily, between Two and Three Mill- 
ions of the wretchedest, dyingest slaves this 
world of God's ever gave room to, are here 
in the heart of this country ; slaves to the 
Diabolos of relentless Appetite ; slaves whose 
lives are failing every day under the car of 
this Juggernaut, ever rolling on within them. 
Truly, as I said before, through the illusions 
of the present time, things show themselves 
none too clearlv. 

The Board of State Charities of the Com- 
monwealth of iNIassachusetts, reported that 

* See Appendix, Note A. 



114 



THE HIGHEST LA W. 



there were, in that State, in the year 1868, 
Fifty-six Thousand Three Hundred and 
Eighty-two ^' strays," or travelling vagrants, 
— comets in the pauper-sphere without any 
regular orbits. This State was disgracing 
herself, at that time, with a semblance of 
law, called a License Act, which had been 
preceded, however, by many 3^ears of honour- 
able legislation. Massachusetts is certainly 
second to no other State in industry, and 
the opportunities for remunerative labour. 
If, therefore, we take this report as the basis 
of our computation, and endeavour to esti- 
mate from it the whole number of this class 
for the United States, we shall undoubtedly 
fail to come up to the actual truth. Accord- 
ing to this estimate, however, the whole num- 
ber of journeying paupers in this country 
cannot be less than One Million Five Hun- 
dred Thousand. We learn, from various 
official sources, that nearly all these people 
owe their destitute condition to excessive 



THIXGS TO BE ADDED. i j 5 

indulgence in strong drink ; and the fact 
that, during this year of license legislation, 
the number of these people exceeded twice 
the number for the preceding year, when a 
good law was partially enforced, confirms 
this statement. For this increase in vagrancy 
in a single year, the official reports declare 
that there was no ascertainable cause, other 
than the change from prohibitive to licen- 
tious laws. 

Adding now the number of convicts made 
such through the influence of intoxicating 
liquids ; the number of Almshouse and trav- 
elling paupers ; we find that of our Two 
Millions of drunkards, we have about Three 
Hundred Thousand only, not included in the 
criminal and pauper classes. Three Hundred 
Thousand are swiftly journeying to join their 
brethren in the Public Tombs, or homeless 
roads, provided for the reception of this 
human death-in-life, and are not yet arrived 
there. Still we keep their number reenforced. 

II 



Il6 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

From our human, toiling, living wealthy 
bearing the Image and superscription of a 
King, higher than any Caesar, do we supply 
victims for liquor-vending Bacchante, and 
the deep chaotic Death-abodes. Truly^ 
through the illusions of the present, these 
things do not clearly enough show forth 
themselves. 

Two Millions of men created with souls in 
them ; with innocent humanness and this 
God-like-ness, divineness, elected Nature's 
workmen ; sent here to work in fellowship 
with her, to climb, with noble valour and 
heroic growth of life, the rugged years that 
lead up to the onward Eden never to be 
lost ; these Two Millions of men, tempted 
by display of that which '' biteth like a ser- 
pent," lured on from this to ever-deepening 
ruin ; putting into the wasted and accursed 
millions, home and comfort, and the means 
of physical health and strength ; become, — 
instead of Nature's w^orkmen, work-soldiers, 



THINGS TO BE ADDED. nj 

her destroying ulcers, wasting, as from so 
man}' rotten pores, the life that God sent 
throbbing earthward, the true wealth of their 
country, her commercial riches, the bone and 
sinew and unseen life-force of her nobler 
manly and womanl}' workers. These mil- 
lions are not only drunkards, but idlers, — 
wasters of the wealth produced by other 
men, — diseased outlets for all things which 
help to build up and sustain life. The world 
is made just so much poorer by eyery article 
consumed by them. Eyer}' mouthful of food 
put into Bacchante's fever-yictim, eyery 
woyen thread put on him, eyery inch of 
space he fills in from more healthful yacancy, 
eyery healthy atom of fresh air used by him, 
is, so far as the State is concerned, a dead, 
irrecoyerable waste. Yet these Feyer-men 
haye to be supported. For eyery idle one 
of them, you and I, reader, haye to work the 
harder : for eyery article we buy, because of 
them we haye to pa}' the more. In eyery 



Il8 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

idle brain and arm and hand there is unmined 
productive power, belonging licitly to the 
world. The fever-fire takes hold upon it, — 
burns it out. In place of the helpful, life- 
giving, beautiful things it should have 
wrought out of chaos into noble form and 
order, we have disease, swallowing into its 
ruin the work of others ; helping to ruin the 
lives of others ; breathing defilement into 
our social air ; making this part of earth, — 
or helping to make it, — what it is. 

Deep untouched coal-mines waste no life- 
sustaining power. Ore-veins, deep down in 
covered earth-strata, turn nothing into ruin, 
nothing into void. Rivers, free from toil, 
following the impulse born in them swiftly 
to the groaning sea, waste nothing but their 
own power, — injure nothing in wasting that. 
Plains, tickled by no tillage, tracked by no 
bipeds but the wide-wandering wild birds, 
would be healthy, harmless waste. Still, 
with over-strained and restless energy, with 



THIXGS TO BE ADDED. 



119 



all the fury of new inventions, do we attack 
these, — strive, with much sweating of the 
brow, much hard beating of the heart, and 
toiling of the brain, — to reclaim all these 
from waste, and make them give to the 
world's stock of life-adding, life-sustaining 
usabilities. 

Vastly nobler would it be for us to redeem 
far higher power from waste, — from waste 
with dire death in it, — waste with voices 
loudly accusing us that we do redeem it not. 
Human fuel, warming this earthly life into 
its glow of glory, — the heat that helps in the 
forging of thought, the making of life's pro- 
tecting armour, the bringing forth of its 
food ; a nobler ore than God has ever yet 
sealed up in rock, — which glows, adorns, 
works, worships, lives ; these ought we to 
bring into the places and offices ordained for 
them ere an earth-stratum had been laid. 
These are, by far, the profitablest things. 
They will help in the reclaiming of other 



I20 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

things ; furnish ke}'S which will unlock all 
the hidden places of the earth ; unfold m3^s- 
teries yet unrevealed, — forces floating in the 
air, or throbbing unseen in all created things ; 
bring forth treasures which will urge starv- 
ation, nakedness, homelessness slowly off the 
earth. We have not yet fully learned this 
lesson. Through Epicureanisms, Midas- 
longings, it does not clearly show itself. 

Added to the Six Hundred Millions of 
Dollars, must be the support of nearly Two 
Millions of idlers. Make the lowest possible 
estimate of this, and 3^ou swell the amount 
of commercial wealth wasted, — worse than 
wasted, — in this country, every year, to more 
than One Billion of Dollars. And this 
amount every workman, every capitalist, 
every person not included in the list of un- 
workers, helps inevitabl}^ to pay ; and yet so 
blind are men, that there are those who 
would convince us that the men who are 
responsible for this ruinous waste, — this 



THINGS TO BE ADDED. 121 

growing, ominous chaos, are true political 
economists, and their business a licit one 
which cannot be removed. If it can not be, 
— if human laws, in harmony with the eter- 
nal, in harmon}' with the divinest King, 
can not remove it, — then Satan holds the 
helm of a doomed Universe ; which is the 
one thing I am steadfastl}' determined never 
to believe. 

For God's work, men could not, just now, 
be persuaded to pa}' this sum. Rebellion 
against God gets it with small protest from 
the men who are robbed ; not only gets it, 
but knows that every dollar of it insures a 
larger harvest in succeeding years. That 
noble nations should support tyrannous or 
useless royalties, despotisms, Romanisms, 
seems to Democracv one of the awfullest 
things now extant. Democrac}' supports 
this despotism, sin-ro)'alty, Diabolism, with- 
out an}' very perceptible grimace ; hurries 
on, in support of it, toward a time when 



122 T^HE HIGHEST LAW. 

departed royalties shall have accession from 
a continent they never dreamed of. 

One result of this waste is manifest in the 
overwork which is the curse of American 
workmen. If three men exist in a miniature 
state of their own, one of whom is idle, it is 
plain that, for his support, the other two 
must work beyond the limits of the labour 
necessary to support themselves. If the 
three men are multiplied to any imaginable 
number, it still remains true, that for the 
idlers, whatever the number, other men must 
overwork ; and since, in the present case, 
such overwork is in behalf of criminals, and 
public or private paupers, it is apparent 
that it is, in the end, unpaid. Grimed work- 
men down in the deep earth-arteries, — sweat-^ 
ing at the forge, — toiling, in forest, field or 
factory, — are slaves to more guilty and more 
damned slaves. Mock them not with your 
sentimental cant about ^^ nobility of labour." 
There is no nobility of overwork. There is 



THIXGS TO BE ADDED, 1 23 

a peculiar dignity in fruitful, earnest work, 
subduement of chaotic waste. There is 
nobilit}' in happy, honest toil and sw^eat, 
when the darkness does not bring exhaustion, 
nor discouragement, — only rest from labour, 
and opportunity for improvement of mind ; 
but in forced work, overwork, none ; nothing 
but degradation, defilement, grime of the 
earth, — soiling body and soul, — not easil}^ 
washed away. And the guilt of it all lies at 
the door of the debauchee and idler, and of 
him who made him such. Dignity ? Such 
as may be in slaver}^ and in vassalage ! The 
toil of the dav labourer in the ditch, or 
quarr}^, from the earl}^ to the latter twilight, 
that he may carry to his home, beneath his 
roof of boards, sufficient to sustain the hun- 
gry there, until the next day's pay comes in; 
destined to find starvation there, if strength 
gives way, or he works the less ; what 
dignity in that, think you ? Or the work- 
man at the furnace, or in the mine, with 



124 



THE HIGHEST LA W. 



fevered pulse, ticking fast tlie seconds of his 
hour of life, hastening the time when the 
eternal death-clock, for him, shall strike its 
■^' dust to dust," carrying home from the glare 
or darkness, though it be considered a fair 
price, only enough to feed those linked to his 
poverty, another day, — where is the nobility 
of his servitude? Down in these dregs there 
may be nobility of manhood, toiling and 
suffering heroically for what it loves ; but 
dignity of such labour? No! It is degra- 
ding, dreadful over-work. Link not nobility 
or dignity with that. 

True, for this over-exertion they require 
a larger amount of pay than for the healthy 
work which would be asked of them, under 
a better administration ; and there being but 
little competition, the employer must accede 
to the demand. How does this help them, 
when the employer must compel them to 
pay back the wages of such overwork, with 
interest, when they buy the goods they have 



THIXGS TO BE ADDED. 125 

assisted to produce? Or, in other words,, 
when all employers or producers, of every 
class, are obliged to charge exorbitantly for 
their goods, because of the necessar}' high 
price of the labour put into them? The 
labourer, even with his exhausting overwork, 
does not often accumulate. Selling body 
and soul to be stretched on the rack of toil, 
from the earliest hour of mocking da3'light 
to the last, what does he gain therefrom ? 
Denying himself advantages for mental bet- 
terment, and all life-giving recreation, elim- 
inating all ornament and beauty from his 
life, he sometimes gains, — a home to die in. 
Rarel}^ more, so long as he remains a com- 
mon labourer. There is crime to be paid for 
or punished, — paupers, criminals, vagrants to 
be supported. His life must go into this 
waste. He can not sell his labour cheaply, 
and live honestly. Let the wages of any 
man's work on the steady thermometer of 
the American toil-market, go down to the 



126 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

point ordinaril}' called ''cheap/' and the 
army of unworkers has a new recruit. 

The manufacturer in this New World 
welcomed, long ago, the advent here of 
musculous arms and brawny hands from the 
fens and fogs of the Emerald Isle. He did 
not give attention to an appetite which came 
with it ; and in place of the expected cheap- 
ness of labour, was a steadily advancing 
price. Idleness had reenforcement as well 
as industry. Crime and pauperism had 
addition to themselves. From other na- 
tions of the old continents have come many 
workers ; and during such growth of popu- 
lation as was never known before, to our 
surprise the wages of work have been 
steadily growing. We can find partial ex- 
planation of this, in the fact that America 
presents abundant opportunities for inde- 
pendent labour. Were not this the case, 
however, with our masses of idlers, work- 
wages could not be very greatly reduced, 



rillXGS TO BE ADDED. 127 

with safety. All work must have hope in it, 
heart in it. Home is as dear to employed 
as employer. When work will not keep 
comfort there, driye oyer its threshold the 
Want-demons, then comes quick hopeless- 
ness, quick ceasing from work, and in its 
turn, uncontrollable desperation and law- 
lessness. 

Something might be done. This enormous 
waste might be stopped. If men would try 
to put away illusions and Epicureanisms, 
and restrain their Midas-longings for a time, 
it would be done. Men, once more seeing 
things clearly, Avould be capable of making 
an end of this godless thing ; and would find 
that gradually many things would be added 
unto them. To the productive force of the 
State would be added the power of Four 
Million human arms, now^ burning away in 
guilty, maddening fire. Four Million human 
hands would be applied to American void 
and disorder ; and out of chaos should be 



12 



128 THE HIGHEST LAW, 

wrought, in multiplied new creations, the 
things by which men live. Folded, protect- 
ing, beautifying web ; health-giving, ripe 
fruitage ; more plentiful fibre of fresh food ; 
less of the work which is supplied for idle 
hands ; these things would result. Two 
Million souls, working with hand and brain, 
swiftly redeeming the orderless and vacant, 
would hurry forward these results. Two 
Millions added to the grand work-army ; 
support of these Two Millions taken from 
the responsibilities of other workers, — put 
upon themselves, — would redeem that army 
from the curse of overwork. Increasing the 
quantity of useful, helpful, beautiful things, 
without increase of home-demand ; diminish- 
ing thus their cost; we should make cheap 

labour possible, give working-men, and 

working-women, leisure for healthful rest, 
amusement, and mental betterment. We 
should enable the manufacturer to put into 
his goods, without increase of cost, instead 



THIXGS TO BE ADDED. 129 

of feverish, hurried, half-done work, — such as 
American goods do notoriously bear witness 
of, — careful, studious, perfect work ; work 
which might be safely put in the markets of 
the world. Even Free Trade might then be 
one of the possibilities. Is it a small thing 
to accomplish, but a great thing to look 
forward to, this : Six Hundred Millions of 
Dollars redeemed from waste, added to the 
gains of our workers, by abolishment of 
robbery ? The possibility of this thing is, 
verily, no illusion. Unless time shall speed- 
ily make an end of us, this possibilit}" shall 
become fact, — shall gradually, slowly, it ma}^ 
be, grow into fact. Bad diseases are not 
cured in a day. America's burning, rotting 
fever can not be broken up immediately 
by any law ; but gradually, if this devil's 
trade is abolished, it may be broken up. 
Idlers, paupers, criminals, slowly shall di- 
minish ; and with such diminishing shall 
come, increased prosperity. The influence 



I30 



THE HIGHEST LA W. 



of every redeemed Fever-man shall be felt 
here^ while the joy in Heaven goes on over 
him. I am dreaming of no human Utopia; 
am onl}^ pra3^ing, in all earnestness, for the 
advent of a time when men shall see more 
clearly, and shall act more wisely ; when 
the hovels and crowded tenements of my 
country's workers shall change more rapidly 
to cottages ; when the disorder and rank 
filth about them shall change to bloom and 
order. 

Shame be upon us, if inurement of present 
evils and disorders shall do the devil's work 
of making us believe them all to be inevitable 
and uneradicable ; if a blameful, inexcusable, 
school-bov recklessness shall hinder us from 
making any effort to remove them ; if instead, 
we allow them to remove prosperity from us, 
and us from a high place among the nations 
of civilization. Shame be upon us, if, with 
the giant's frame, we only fill it with deform- 
ity and dwarf-life. 



THIXGS TO BE ADDED. 131 

Curse not the idlers, you who have a hand 
in making them such ; you who sanction the 
liquid roots of idleness ! Complain not of 
the waste, and consequent tax, you who vote 
to open wide the gates of law, and let crime 
flow, flooding 3^our country ! Though your 
hearts grow sick, at sight of some poor, pit- 
eous wretch, crawling in hopeless fever and 
abandonment, slowly no-whither on God's 
Earth, appetite ruling and ruining him ; 
though you pass by sadly on the other side, 
when some weak, wearied workman, with 
only dust and vacancy in the purse of him, 
finds only discouragement in the heart of 
him, as sickness enters the home where want 
has always been ; though you turn from the 
sight, when the mother in that home, with 
the weary, pain-and-patience look, which is 
no stranger to motherhood, tries to gather 
the worn rags into one more da}" of covering 
for child-nakedness ; yet remember, citizen 
of my countr}^, for the sadness of that scene 

12^ 



132 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

3^ou are, in part, responsible ! In 3^ou, God 
has put some governing power. Democracy 
gives you an opportunity to make it feit. In 
place of the semblance, — no-government, — 
which gives increase to these sadnesses, — out 
of which crimes do grow, — you are called 
upon to exert it ; to array yourself upon the 
side of government, law, conscience, reason, 
God ; to fight there, as a brave God's soldier, 
all things which do oppose these, the increase 
of all lawless businesses, illusions, customs, 
which live by triumph over law, or by vic- 
tory of passion over men ; to fight these 
bravely off the earth. When you have done 
that. Plenty shall rule here instead of Want ; 
happy, peaceful, rewarded work shall take 
the place of over-toil ; ignorance, brute- 
mindedness, rebellious, fiery passion, shall 
give way to advancing culture, advancing 
civilization ; in place of ragged, lean and 
surly poverty, haughty and yet helpless, 
shall be a greater degree of comfort and 



THINGS TO BE ADDED. 



133 



equalit}^ for all ; and government shall find, 
in the hearts of the people, the executive 
force of kind^ good, honourable law, instead 
of the Chaos-forces which def}^ law. Six 
Hundred Millions of Dollars redeemed to 
our workmen, — sent to them, as though from 
Heaven, in another Manna-fall, — surely would 
amount to something ; surely would help to 
bring these things about. But the curse is 
far deeper than any outside view of men 
reveals it to be. Misery has no cure in any 
outward thing alone. Sources of un-comfort 
are not external wholly. In the inmost heart 
of man, the deep, divinely-fashioned soul of 
him, marred b)^ temptations yielded to, there 
is work to be done. In the absence of this 

*' You will not compass your poor ends 
Of barley-feeding, and material ease." 

In the absence of this, the condition of men, 
— or classes of men, — can not be greatly 
bettered. In absence of this, material things 



134 



THE HIGHEST LAW. 



do but feed the life-wasting, and ruin-work- 
ing ulcer. Millions of Dollars, — in the hands 
of avaricious men blinded by illusions, — 
devoted to the work of corrupting hearts, 
and taking away of human souls, is not a 
small thing. It is a monster-evil, built, — I 
do assure you, — of something beside lily-dust 
and moonbeams. Rid the earth of this 
monster, abolish the death-work, and if no 
Utopia may be found, these things of comfort, 
— deep-laid bulwarks of certain peace, — shall 
gradually be given. Taking up, for once, 
God's work, helping men, with some little 
hope to pray, '' Lead us not into tempta- 
tion;" taking away the temptations; we 
shall surely find that all these things shall be 
added unto us. 

As God's years hurry forward, phantasies 
and illusions do surely fade away, and men 
see clearlier. There is a certain After-sight ; 
to guilty men a terrible, to unwise, blind. 



THINGS TO BE ADDED, 



135 



uncaring men a sad and shaming After-sight. 
Epicureanisms, illusions, Midas - longings, 
phantasies, phantasms, falsities, sins, all 
change to that. Time is a great Metamor- 
phoser, a great Teacher, a great Master of 
Illusions. Slowly, — as a man who has so 
much to do, in the on-coming years, that it 
becomes him not to hurry now to get it 
done, — yet surely, effectually, does he master 
them. American eyes have j^et to be anoint- 
ed, touched b}' him, until they see the waste 
and ruin in our midst, and the end, towards 
which, — along the foreheads of Two Million 
human beings, — a flaming sword of death- 
dealing Fever, threatfuUy is pointing us. 

An Egyptian king, back among the primal 
entities, heeded not the divine voices. He, 
too, was blinded by illusions. He, too, be- 
lieved that he could run the machinerv of 
his kingdom in defiance of the spoken laws 
of God. He, too, believed that human gov- 
ernment, business, was one thing ; the divine 



136 THE HIGHEST LAW. 

commandments and fatalities another and far 
distant thing. To him, at last, as the Leader 
of the Exodus stretched a single hand out 
toward the sea, and the overwhelming waves 
came, death-laden, upon the unwheeled 
chariots, — there came, for a moment, awful 
after-sight. Epicureanism was forgotten. 
The illusion faded. Pharaoh, in that death- 
hour, saw things clearly. 

Illusions began earlier than this. In Do- 
than-wild, before this, men with deep Midas- 
yearnings, sold manhood into slavery. On 
wild Dothan-plains, Joseph's nomadic breth- 
ren ^'transacted business" with the wander- 
ing Ishmaelites ; transacted there a guilty and 
inthralling business, — less evil than Bac- 
chante's, yet bad enough. Years afterward, 
in an Egyptian palace, those bad brethren 
had a shaming aftersight. The illusion had 
perished away ; guilt, bitter guilt had come. 

Are these things too far distant ? Illusions 
have been, in far later years. Mighty nations. 



THIXGS TO BE ADDED. 



137 



ere the birth of ours, refused to put them- 
selves in harmony with God. One Man, 
destined to be thorn-crowned, glory-crowned, 
said to an ancient nation of its Temple: 
There shall not be left here one stone upon 
another that shall not be thrown down. 
Illusions were among that people, and this 
Man, between two thieves, was put to death. 
The people of that nation, scattered to the 
verges of the earth, despised wherever they 
may be, have opportunity for after-sight. In 
spite of stubbornness, they have left behind 
them some illusions. 

In France, some years agone, Aristocracy, 
blinded by Epicureanism, seemed to think 
that poverty and overwork could go on under 
God's sky, supporting it for ever. Men and 
women died along the roads of France ; were 
trodden under the feet of Monseigneur's 
horses ; crushed, as though they had been 
rats, under his carriage-wheels in the streets 
of the cities of France. Monseigneur thought 



138 



THE HIGHEST LAW. 



this could go on for ever. With his head on 
the bloody block, awaiting there the aveng- 
ing descent of the knife of La Guillotine, 
Monseigneur found the illusion gone. In 
that bloody Revolution, La Guillotine 
brought like fearful after-thought, and 
fearful death, to all the Messeigneurs then 
in France. In that moment of after-thought, 
things were seen clearly. 

Is this, still, too far in the buried deeps of 
the past ? In this year of our Lord, Eighteen 
Hundred and Seventy, in that same France, 
one Louis Napoleon, puffed up with much 
vanity of power ; blinded by thick mists of 
illusion ; working not in harmony with God 
and the eternal things ; forgetting the com- 
mand, '^ Thou shalt not kill ;" went forth from 
his palaces, to make war upon a neighbour- 
nation, and so perpetuate his tyranny over 
men. He counted this a very possible 
thing to do, God still ruling among the 
worlds. That was an illusion. Napoleon, 



THINGS TO BE ADDED. I ^q 

to-day a prisoner of war, in his enemy^s 
palace of Wilhelmshohe, has grand oppor- 
tunit}' for after-sight. Napoleon, no longer 
L'Empereur, would give half of France, if 
time could roll backward a little way, and 
he could have clear foresight of things a 
little. France is no longer his to give. At 
Wilhelmshohe, Monsieur Napoleon now sees 
things somewhat clearlier. 

Is this, still, too far away ? Verily, in these 
United States, not many years ago, Mon- 
seigneur of the South, took up an illusion. 
He trusted that he could enslave men for 
ever, and, aided by Cotton, control this great 
nation. He thought that he could find some 
success in other than harmony with God. 
Some of his illusions passing away, he 
thought to secure himself in others b}' a 
warlike attempt at establishment of a great 
Slave-Empire, in which he could live by the 
degradation of men and women. After a 
terrible war, which slaughtered the sons of 

13 



I40 



THE HIGHEST LA IV. 



Monseigheur, deprived him of his power, 
his property, his position; made him an 
outlaw and a beggar; he has time. for after- 
sight and cursing of the illusion. 

The phantasms which hide from men our 
ruinous waste of commercial wealth ; pre- 
vent them from seeing clearly what should 
be done to make an end of it, and its sad 
results ; prevent them from seeing the end 
toward which their country is hurrying on ; 
will some day pass away. Whether it be too 
late, or not, things will clearlier show them- 
selves. If sufficient fore-sight shall come 
speedily, it will be well. If not, after-sight 
will come, in the midst of a mighty Ruin. 

There is yet an Impending Crisis. Omi- 
nous, fateful, it hangs over us. With the 
flashing of the swords, the thunder of crash- 
ing and mangling death, it may not decide 
itself, but it can not be escaped. It is a dark 
cloud, lighted at times by the sunlight of 



THIXGS TO BE ADDED. 



141 



hope, as the da3's hasten on ; to unfold finally 
the glory of the great Love-presence, — by 
more of wisdom merited, — which shall lead 
us on in triumph ; or, to issue its bolt of con- 
demnation, and send a people which respects 
not God, down to Plutonian Shores of 
national disgrace and ruin. Citizens, Com- 
rades in the World-army I the responsibility 
is upon you. Before an unveiled Love, far 
up in star-set spaces, by all of us unmerited, 
you soon w^ill have after-sight of all. The 
last illusion will have faded away for ever. 



APPENDIX. 



Appendix. 



In confirmation of some statements made in this book, 
which to the unreflective reader, may possibly seem over- 
statements, I take pleasure in reprinting the following cry of 
alarm from a not-easily-alarmed newspaper, — the New York 
Tribune. 

THE MORAL OF THE LAST MURDER. 

Another murder, atrocious in itself and alarming in its 
suggestions, disgraced the city on Saturday night. A party 
of Germans, quietly seated in a saloon, were intruded upon 
by a number of ruffians crazed with drink, who, not content 
with refusing to pay for liquor they had ordered and drunk, 
invaded the private portion of the house, and heaped upon 
women the most infamous epithets. Cajoled, rather than 
forced from the house, they assaulted it from the street with 
a shower of stones, and one of the missiles struck and 
killed an inmate as he was closing the door against the 
rioters. The young desperadoes — the oldest of them not 
twenty — had roamed for hours unchecked through the streets, 
and dispersed unmolested after ending the orgies of the 
night with this foul murder, although it appears three of 
them have since been arrested. 

All men can see that this crime means something more 
vital than the wanton killing of a peaceable citizen. Coup- 
ling it Avith the other affairs which have been so numerous 
since Tammany tore down the sluice-gates that checked the 
flood of rum and ruin, this murdei- means the swift on-coming 
of uncontrollable lawlessness. When the Legislature, at the 
bidding of the Sachems, unshackled the liquor traffic, we 
protested against the measure, because experience had shown 
that in a great city like this the restraints of law were absohitely 
necessary. The result of the repeal of the ^Metropolitan 
Excise law was inevitable ; it has come upon us sooner than 
we feared. 

Already paupers have increased and criminals have been 
multiplied. Within four months from the repeal of the 
Excise law, the weekly arrests have increased from an average 
of less than i,ioo to an unparalleled total of 2,137, the record 



146 APPEXDIX. 

of last week. This fact speaks volumes, but it does not tell 
all. The scores of murders, the daily, almost hourly, affrays, 
the instant recourse to the knife or pistol, the startling increase 
in drunkenness in the streets, the indifference of the Tam- 
many officials charged with the administration of the law — 
these are the details of the alarming story. 

NOTE A. 

A statement by J. H. Orne, Esq., the official head of the 
Order of Good Templars for North America, is authority for 
my statement as to the actual number of drunkards in the 
United States. Estimates, and partial statistics, from other 
sources, seem rather to increase the number given, than to 
diminish it. To published statements by Rev. Samuel J. 
May, author of " Recollections of the Anti-Slaver}^ Conflict," 
—to Rev. W. M. Thayer, Secretary of the Mass. State Tem- 
perance Alliance, and to various public officials, I am 
indebted for other figures given in this book. 

NOTE B. 

A writer in one of the political papers, states that in his 
opinion, crime is not now increasing in this country ; that 
the impression, that within the last twenty-five years, all the 
varieties of crime have steadily increased, is due to increased 
facilities for reporting them, and an increased population. 
This would surely be a very comfortable view of the case, if 
one could live on in heroic disregard of facts. Records will 
show, that in almost any given locality, crime has been, for 
twenty-five years, very steadil}^ increasing, and that for the 
last five years, the increase has been very rapid and alarming. 
I must be understood, however, as excepting from the condi- 
tions of this statement localities where there has been approxi- 
mation to the kind of law prayed for in this book. In Maine, 
for instance, where a Prohibitive Law has been in force, and 
where hanging has become nea?dy extinct, there has been a 
very considerable diminishing in crime, especially of the more 
sickening and terrible forms of crime ; a fact which, it seems 
to me, is somewhat significant. 

POSTSCRIPT. 

The appearance of this book has been unavoidably delayed, 
beyond the expected time of publication. I trust, however, 
that its readers will rather gain, than lose, by the delay, and 
will therefore very readily grant me their full pardon. 



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